The effect of the pandemic on the performance of tourist guides and the practice of their professions: A qualitative study in the Cappadocia region

Abstract

Crises are the turning points where all industries are heavily affected, national economies experience significant problems, and only businesses which develop appropriate strategies and methods can survive. Sometimes natural disasters and sometimes terrorist attacks may cause these crisis periods to occur. In such cases, people first give up on their luxury consumption, such as their touristic travels. This situation makes the tourism sector to be one of the most vulnerable sectors. Tourism is a labor-intensive industry and one of the first sectors affected by such negativities. Therefore, tourism workers particularly feel many difficulties in such periods. One of these affected occupational groups is the tour guiding profession. This study aims to reveal the tour guides' experiences during the pandemic, which caused a significant sectoral crisis, and the effect of these experiences on their performance. The research carried out a qualitative research method and phenomenological research design. Professional tour guides were selected with snowball sampling, which is one of the purposive sampling methods. The ethical compliance of the prepared interview form was endorsed by the Iğdır University Ethics Committee Approval, dated 01.04.2021-No. 2021/12. Interviews were conducted with 20 professional tour guides registered at Nevşehir Chamber of Guides. The audio recordings obtained from the interviews were transcripted and identified as the MAXQDA project. In the study, content analysis was used as the analysis method. Three main themes and ten sub-themes were created using the data from the literature and the field. As a result of the coding process, the most repeated principal theme was determined as "Psychological and Behavioral Results." The most repeated sub-theme was "Professional Dissatisfaction." The research results have revealed that professional tour guides were not satisfied with their profession during the pandemic period, and the pandemic process had unfavorable effects on their performance.