International Journal of Management and Commerce Innovations ISSN 2348-7585 (Online) Vol. 7, Issue 2, pp: (508-512), Month: October 2019 - March 2020, Available at: www.researchpublish.com
SERVICE QUALITY OF TOUR GUIDES IN SELECTED TOUR OPERATORS IN NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION AND REGION IV-A 1
Reyzel N. Aguirre, 2Jomarie L. Montaner, 3Coline N. San Luis, 4Irene S. Gueco College of Tourism and Hospitality Management , De La Salle University – Dasmarinas, Dasmarinas City, Cavite, Philippines
Abstract: The tourism industry is wide service industry, it involves many service-oriented groups of people for it to operate functionally. One of these service-oriented group of people is the tour guides, which play a huge role in the tourism industry since they provide the tourist with a much clearer and bigger picture of a destination and its services. This study examines the factors that affects the service quality of tour guides. This study can fill in gaps for research about effectiveness of tour guides that is not just based on the customer’s point of view but also to the tour guides themselves. SERVQUAL method five dimensions; reliability, assurance, tangibility, empathy and responsiveness, was used to examine the tour guides' challenges encountered during a tour. This is a qualitative study wherein purposive sampling was used to determine respondents and data was collected through semistructured interview. After conducting interviews, the findings suggest that most of the challenges encounter by the guides are language barrier, safety and security of the tourists, lack of guest profiling, cultural differences and failure of guides to provide the promised service. In conclusion, tour guides should focus on their professional competence skill, enhancement of knowledge of the destination and its culture. Guides must be trained with an emphasis on serving clients well. Keywords: Content Analysis, SERVQUAL, tour guide, tour operations.
I. INTRODUCTION Even if it is a group of people, duo or solo, a person has a desire to travel. By travelling, they can go from one place to another, discover each place that is yet to be appreciated and realize that people can escape in their reality, in their daily routine and rest from all the worries that they think about in an ordinary day. People in this technology and mediaexposed generation would be fond of dreaming to go into places that they looked-up in the internet, search for it and achieve their goal of reaching that destination with the help of the people who works in the Tourism industry such as travel agents and tour operators that will help them create their itineraries and attend to their needs before arriving in their target destination. Upon arriving in the place, this is where a traveler‟s journey to an unfamiliar location starts. They don‟t know what to do, where to go and how to survive or cope-up in interacting with some locals if they need some help, especially to the people who chose to travel solo. This is where a person needs to accompany them, in order to assist the travelers and give some notable information about the place they were into. They are called tour guides. Tour guides lead a group of people, guests from overseas or from the resident country around monuments, sites and museums of a city or district; to make the guests understand in a motivating and humorous manner, in the language of the guests‟ choice, the cultural, natural heritage and environment (European Federation of Tourist Guide Association, 2014 cited in Weiler, Black, 2015)[1]. Being a tour guide has been one of the most interesting job choices in the field of Tourism industry because a person is challenged to develop the exceptional skills they need to possess. Aside from having excellent communication skills like most of the Tourism industry jobs requires, this job requires you to have a good memory and
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