Determining the roles of tourist guides which directly affect secondary teachers’ satisfaction: A case of Maropeng and the Sterkfontein caves, South Africa

Abstract

Tourist guides are one of the crucial front-line professionals, information-givers and interpreters in the tourism industry. They occupy a special position within the tourism industry. The role performed by tourist guides can produce a quality service for visitors, and this is essential to the success of a destination, its reputation and its image. Through their knowledge and interpretation of an attraction and culture, and their interpersonal communication skills, they are able to transform the tourists’ visit from a tour into an enjoyable experience. Without the service of tourist guides organised tourism is highly difficult for both the tour operators and tourist attraction managers. The opportunity of direct interaction with visitors makes guides responsible for projecting the correct image of a destination, communicating factually correct information about a destination, ensuring the safety and security of the visitors as well as pleasant and satisfying stay for them during their stay at tourism destinations. Therefore, the success of tourist attractions or destinations depends heavily on the performance of tourist guides. This paper aims to determine which roles of guides have direct impacts on secondary school teachers’ satisfaction. This will be achieved by examining the role of tourist guides and its relation to secondary school teachers’ satisfaction in a general sense. Data was collected through self-administered questionnaires. The questionnaires were distributed among the secondary school teachers who participated in a guided school tour at Maropeng and/or the Sterkfontein Caves during the months of March and April 2016. Only 202 questionnaires were usable. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Version 21 was used to analyse the data. The Mann Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to test for variance between distinct groups. In general, respondents were satisfied with the way in which guides performed their roles. Mann Whitney and Kruskal Wallis tests reveal that there are statistically significant differences between secondary teachers’ demographic results and the dimensions of satisfaction.

Keywords

• Tour-guiding
• tourist guide role
• tourist attractions
• visitor satisfaction
• South Africa tourism