The tourism industry is considered a
typical service industry, one in which the involvement of service components is
relatively high. Serving and satisfying customers are fundamental goals of the
tourism business, with service providers being part of the product itself. Given
tour guides’ roles as intermediaries between tourists and an unfamiliar environment,
special attention should be paid to the service quality of tour guides, as it
has the potential to increase tourist satisfaction and produce measurable
benefits in profits and market share. The aim of the study is therefore to
build the quality indicators of tour guide services. In terms of research
methodologies, a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches was
conducted to reach the objectives. After both in-depth interviews and two
rounds of focus group sessions, six dimensions (reliability, response, physical
environment, guarantee, care and culture) and 30 indicators were obtained. Analytic
Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied to determine the weighting of various
evaluation criteria on the indicators of Taiwanese tour guides’ service
quality. Among the criteria, “The tour guides have a precise service attitude
and execution ability.” was found to be the most important, while “During the
trip, the tour guides dress properly.” ranked as the least important.
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