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 semi-structured 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.
Title: SERVICE QUALITY OF TOUR GUIDES IN SELECTED TOUR OPERATORS IN NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION AND REGION IV-A
Author: Reyzel N. Aguirre, Jomarie L. Montaner, Coline N. San Luis, Irene S. Gueco
International Journal of Management and Commerce Innovations
ISSN 2348-7585 (Online)
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