Foreign Tourists’ Opinion towards the Desirable Characteristics of Thai Tourist Guides

Abstract

This research aims to study the desirable characteristics of Thai tourist guises regarding five aspects: personality, knowledge, interpersonal skills, attitude, and art of speaking. The subject of the study were 400 foreign inbound tourists having experiences of trips in Thailand conducted by Thai tourist guides.  The research instrument was the questionnaire with the reliability of Cronbach’s alpha    at 0.99. The findings showed that the tourists found the five aspects of the desirable characteristics of Thai tourist guides very important ( = 3.96). The means of the importance of the five aspects were as follows: knowledge ( = 4.12) ,   personality ( = 4.01), attitude ( = 3.96), interpersonal skills ( = 3.95), and art of speaking ( = 3.77) respectively.   According to each aspect, it was found that the general knowledge of the tourist guides was the most important issue regarding the aspect of knowledge ( = 4.24); being disciplined was the most important for the personality ( = 4.19); having passion in one’s job and being happy at work were the most important for attitude ( = 4.10), being thoughtful in taking care of the tourists, specifically the needed ones such as the elderly and the handicapped, was the most important for the interpersonal skills ( = 4.18); and being accurate and precise in communication was found as the most important characteristic for the art of speaking ( = 3.95).