UNETHICAL BEHAVIORS FACED BY TOURIST GUIDES

Abstract

Tourist guides are considered to be a key element of the tourism industry and perform important tasks such as providing tourists with information about destinations, offering cultural experiences and ensuring their safety. However, this professional group may often face unethical behaviors. Unethical attitudes towards tourist guides can be caused by travel agencies, accommodation companies, tourists and other tourist guides. Unethical behavior can reduce the motivation and performance of tourist guides, negatively affect tourists' destination experience and damage the reputation of the tourism industry. It is of great importance for the development of the tourism sector that tourist guides behave ethically as well as the stakeholders in the tourism sector. In order to encourage tourist guides to work more ethically, measures such as training, supervision mechanisms, better working conditions and the establishment of ethical codes should be taken. In this study, unethical behaviors that tourist guides are exposed to were tried to be identified and solutions were offered to overcome these problems. The research data were obtained through face-to-face interviews with 12 certified tourist guides residing in the Marmara region. According to the results of the research, sub-dimensions such as acceptance of below-base wages, illegal guiding, not communicating tour cancellations of agencies to tourist guides, not paying for the services provided, stealing a tour by another tourist guide, ideological pressure, and not conducting the necessary inspections frequently enough came to the fore as unethical behaviors encountered by tourist guides.