Abstract:

In tourism sector service processes are performed by close relationships and interactions among the tourist and employee. In the related literature, in spite of numerous studies about the tourists and employee interactions in different fields of tourism sector, number of the research that investigates the interactions of the tourists and employee in tours is still limited. In this study, it was aimed to determine the satisfactory/dissatisfactory experiences of the tourists who joined the local tour in Nevşehir in terms of the tour guides by using the Critical Incident Technique (CIT). CIT is a qualitative data collection method that it is based on collection and categorization of individual experiences to the satisfactory or dissatisfactory experiences during the service encounter between tourists and employee. With this purpose, 156 critical incidents were collected by open-ended style questionnaire from tour guides. These incidents were firstly categorized as satisfactory and dissatisfactory critical incidents : then these categories were separated sub-category as tangibles, empathy, reliability, understanding customers, responsiveness, elimination of problems, assurance and price. The results showed that there were more number of satisfactory incidents than dissatisfactory incidents. Thus, it is necessary for travel companies to identify dissatisfactory incidents particularly and improve the occurred problems for their business success.

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