An Exploration of Tourist Guides' Competencies to Create Memorable Tourist Experiences

Abstract

Tourist guiding in South Africa is a sector of the tourism industry that is subject to regulation to acquire competence and skills to meet the guiding standards and to provide quality services to tourists. The research aims to explore the skill sets perceived by tourist guides as the most important in their professional practice to create a memorable tourist experience to ensure that skills perceived to be most important are considered during the guiding training course for present and future tourist guides to prepare them for both employment, long-life learning and enhance their performance to attain the highest level of customer satisfaction. This study made use of a descriptive quantitative research approach through an online survey research design to collect data. A non-random sample of 320 tourist guides was selected to participate in the study. Data from the online survey was coded into numerical representations and captured in Microsoft Excel. Descriptive statistics together with a confirmatory factor analysis were used to analyse and interpret the results. The results showed various skill sets perceived as the most important from the tourist guides' perspective, including honesty and reliability, ethical skills, time management, customer care skills, health and safety skills and communication skills.

Building Tour-Guiding Skills During the ESP Course. Tourism Students’ Vision of Their Potential Professional Development

“…The modern tour guide must be a multi-skilled individual, capable of sharing information with the tourists in a captivating way, in creating a memorable holiday experience, thus ensuring the promotion of the destination they visit. Their "front-line staff" status, as "unofficial ambassadors of their countries, tourism companies, tourist destinations and employers" (Kapa et al, 2022(Kapa et al, , p. 1351) require an outstanding moral profile, revealed through qualities such as authenticity, trustworthiness, a sense of humor, a positive attitude, courtesy, professionalism, willingness to help the customers, as well as intellectual qualities -being knowledgeable about tourism and cultural matters, being open-minded, a life-long learner willing to improve and update one's information on a constant basis (idem). To such a moral and intellectual profile, one must add the ability to transmit effectively the above-mentioned information by using communication and intercultural communication skills, the capability to plan and organize efficiently tours, the ability to mediate work-related tense situations with/ between colleagues, hosts and tourists.…”

“…(Mitchell, 2005, pp. 20, 21) Guides and tourists alike usually belong to different cultural, social, religious and ethnic backgrounds which makes communication skills, both in their productive (speaking) and receptive (listening) forms essential for "higher levels of tourist satisfaction, destination loyalty and positive word-ofmouth advertising" (Kapa et al, 2022(Kapa et al, , p. 1352. Since tour guides help build a positive destination image through the ways they manage to offer "an interpretation" of the place, and the manner in which they help erase differences and diffuse (potential) conflicts, reinforcing communication skills -the core of foreign language courses -is essential for them.…”

Kłopotliwe dziedzictwo w turystycznym kontekście. Opolscy przewodnicy i ich strategie narracji o tym, co nieobojętne społecznie

“…Zwykle uwypukla się znaczenie takich cech i kompetencji przewodnickich jak autentyczność przekazu, poczucie humoru (Kassawnh i in. 2019; Sandaruwani, Gnanapala 2016), gotowość do poszerzania i weryfikowania wiedzy, umiejętności organizacyjne i przywódcze (Kapa, de Crom, Hermann 2022, s. 1351.…”