Abstract:

With its geographical location and its rich historical cultural heritage, Turkey sees it as a bridge that connects Asia and Europe. Istanbul, which has hosted many civilizations in the past, is now one of Turkey’s important tourist destinations. The tourist guide is one of the actors that accompany tourists throughout their trips, facilitates tourists’ trips, introduces the place and the country to tourists, and plays an important role in the tourism sector. The study aimed at determining the perceptions of local tourists towards the concepts "Turkey", "Istanbul", "Tourism" and "Tourist Guide" through metafores. The universe of the research is formed by indigenous tourist groups visiting Istanbul with tourist guides. The semi-configured survey form, prepared for the purpose of providing data to the research, was applied to local tourist groups visiting Istanbul with tourist guide between July and August 2017 using the easy sampling method. Of the 38 survey forms obtained, 8 of them were removed due to the failure to establish the relationship between the metaphor created by the participants and the source of these metaphors, the remaining 30 survey forms were included in the survey. The data of this research, which is one of the quality research methods, used by the factual science (fenomenology) pattern, is evaluated by the content analysis technique. The research resulted in 30 indigenous tourists who visited Istanbul through a tourist guide; 22 for the concept of "Turkey"; 19 for the concept of "Istanbul"; 22 for the concept of "Tourism" and 22 for the concept of "Tourist Guide" were developed and these metaphors were made up of more positive perceptions.

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