Tour Guide Performance and Tourist Satisfaction (Revised Importance-Performance Analysis in Tourism).
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Date
2015
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Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
Tour guides play an important role as a stakeholder in the tourism industry. Therefore, measuring tour guide performance is an essential factor to monitor the service of tour guides that ultimately affects the tourist satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to address the abundance of such evaluation system and to hypothesize tour guide performance has an influence on tourist satisfaction. Revised Importance-Performance Analysis (RIPA) model has been widely adopted to assess the performance levels therefore, RIPA approach was employed in this study. This study involved 122 respondents who visited Sri Lanka in small groups and guided by local tour guides. Purposive Sampling Technique was used to determine the sample units. Primary data were collected using a structured questionnaire which included 17 identified performance attributes categorized under 4 dimensions and used 4 indicators to assess tourist satisfaction. Implicitly derived importance values were obtained to identify the most important attributes that should be present within a tour guide and mean performance values were generated to measure tour guide performance at the industry level. According to the RIPA model, the most efficiently performed attributes are politeness, friendliness, code of ethics and being accessible whenever customer needed whereas attributes such as proficiency in tour guiding language, interpersonal communication indicated lowest performance levels. Analytical tools such as Regression analysis and Pearson's coefficient correlation were used to assess the association between the variables. The results reflect that tour guide performance has an influence on tourist satisfaction however, a weak positive association exists between these two variables. Hence, the study recommends the governments and non-government institutions to exercise a quality performance evaluation system, improve training and developments programs to confirm the continuation of superior customer service.
Key words: Tour Guide Performance, Revised IPA Model, Tourist Satisfaction, Performance Attributes
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Hospitality, Tourism and Events Management degree programme (HTE)