Examining Key Areas of Tourists’ Complains: Case of Freelance Tour Guides
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Date
2018
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Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
The Tourist guide is a key sub service sector in the tourism industry and is a frontline character to interpret and share knowledge among tourists around. Four main guide types can be identified as a national guide, chauffeur-guide, area guide and site guide. Tourist can select the guide type according to their requirements and preference. Currently, Sri Lanka has a huge demand for tourist guides due to the rapid expansion of the tourism industry in recent time. Hence, a dearth of tourist guides can be seen within the industry. Some guides conduct tours having improper qualifications to avoid the occurring gap between the demand and supply. Thus, the knowledge and service, they provide is not up to the stranded level to fulfill the tourist expectations and it causes many complaints. Accordingly, this case study strives to examine the key areas of the tourists' complain on freelance tourist guide. Fifty complains were collected as primary data from the tourists who had accompanied by tourist guide and whom complained against guides by using convenience sampling technique for this case study. Semi structured questions and open ended questions consist in the questionnaire. Descriptive analysis method was used to analyze the qualitative data. As the key complaint, it is identified that improper handling of the tour by the tourist guide leads to the dissatisfaction of tourist. Further, unethical and unprofessional behavior can be identified. Additional payments for entrance fees and transport also marks another major complaint area. Punctuality, reckless driving, not accompanied with tourist, changing the itinerary, providing fallacious information, deficiency of knowledge, language problems, inflexibility of service, shopping, consumption of alcohol, sexual harassment and vehicle condition are the rest of complaints area which identified against freelance tourist guides.
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Keywords
Hospitality Management, Tourism Management, Events Management