Social Media Sharing of Tourist Guides Investigation: The Case of “tourguides.viator.com”

Abstract

Tourist guides introduce our country to our guests the best way and convey their knowledge about many scientific disciplines such as mythology, history of religions, archeology, art history, iconography through an objective expression. Within this framework, the aim of this study is to provide the social media usage of tourist guides as a public relations activity to be evaluated. For the mentioned aim, the comments to the tourist guides as well as the licensed tourist guides' - who work in our country - education, age, gender, years of experiences, working regions and languages information they share on the website “https://tourguides.viator.com” were included. The mentioned factors were classified and analyzed through using Microsoft Excell and SPSS programs. As a result of the analyses it was seen that tourist guides have mainly tour examples on their pages and expressed that they generally provide guidance service in English. In addition, it was found that the positive comments to tourist guides are made based on the knowledge level, communication skills and use of foreign language. Within this context, it was suggested to the tourist guides to revise their publicity pages based on tourist expectations.