Does Physical Apperance of Tourist Guides Affect Tourist’ Satisfaction?

Özet

In tourist guidance service; appearance is quite as effective as several characteristics such as communication, grammar and fluency, knowledge, and courtesy. Physical appearance becomes important from the point of tourist guidance because it is possible to make judgments about what kind of person they are and even to classify them according to how they look. In this study, it was aimed to determine how domestic tourists perceived the physical appearance of tourist guides with whom they engaged most closely during their tour program and whether it had an influence on their satisfaction. Data were gathered through the application of an online questionnaire from January 27 to February 6, 2020, which was developed based on literature. At the end of the period, 116 questionnaires in total were collected based on the convenience sampling. In the analyses, one-sample t-test, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and structural modeling were used in addition to descriptive statistics. The findings showed that domestic tourists thought tourist guides acted in a good manner, they looked professional, they were pretty good-looking, and they had nice clothing. Furthermore, it was also determined that the perception of physical appearance influenced their satisfaction, as well. Therefore, the study concludes that tourist guides need to be well-groomed even though they prefer comfortable clothes because of the nature of their job