International Journal of Tour Guiding and Visitor Attraction Research

My first ever guiding experience, was telling stories to my siblings and cousins, and other friends who would bother to come with me around the streets of my home-town, Valletta. I remember my first visit to an exhibition, back in 1970. As a 15-year old I was impressed with all the exhibits, coming from all over the world. I also remember reading the captions and wondering how was it possible to remember all that information. Maybe the seeds of guiding were already there. Interest in visiting places and guiding continued. For thirteen years I worked as a guide with the then Museums Department (nowadays renamed Heritage Malta). The joy of reading, studying the artefacts and even guiding visitors was my real initiation into the world of professional guiding. This contribution to the first issue of the International Journal of Tour Guiding Research (initially presented at the 6th International Research Forum on Guided Tours) looks back at some of the most important developments that I experienced as a guide lecturer at the Institute of Tourism Studies and to share some thoughts about the Tourist Guide course presently offered by the Institute of Tourism Studies.

A UNESCO world heritage site since 1983, the Taj Mahal, located in the city of Agra in India is an important contributor to tourism in India. In the year 2018 alone, approximately 280 million tourists visited the monument. However, the popularity of the site has several negative impacts such as yellowing of the structure, pollution and overcrowding which endangers this built cultural heritage. Due to this, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which is the national authority entrusted with managing heritage sites, has initiated steps to check overcrowding in the Taj Mahal. One of the widely adopted strategies is demarketing. This paper discusses the impact of different demarketing techniques implemented at Taj Mahal on the tourist guides operating in the monument. To do this, investigative research was conducted with a total of 17 tourist guides who offer their services at the Taj Mahal. A thematic analysis based on semi-structured in-depth interviews was carried out. The study found that though the tourist guides at Taj Mahal are not directly affected by the demarketing measures yet, they face the reverberations of these initiatives. They appreciate the strategies adopted by the authorities to curtail overcrowding and emphasise the need for conservation of the monument as well. The study suggests that demarketing measures not only help in conserving the monument but also prove beneficial for stakeholders. The findings of the study are helpful for policymakers, and monument leadership in taking such measures to control the excessive tourism activities without affecting local stakeholders’ income. As demarketing is a delicate measure, it should be considered carefully on a case-by-case basis, taking important stakeholders into confidence. Various destinations have applied demarketing strategies in western countries, however, in India, the Taj Mahal is the first monument which has decided to implement such techniques to curb excessive flows of tourists. This study provides a fresh perspective on the effectiveness of this strategy. Further, the concept of demarketing is novel to stakeholders in India in general and the Taj Mahal in particular.

This paper provides a historical overview of Tourist Guiding, followed by some thoughts and reflections on how we can improve and develop our profession into the 21st Century. Thus, the paper traces the main developments of the profession through time. The idea of the paper is to offer a context to this new Journal, and hopefully entice the reader to draw useful parallels when critically reading the content of this and future issues of this publication.

Iranian people have a rich and significant history of nomadism and are still in contact with this ancient practice. The purpose of this research is to investigate and evaluate the Iranian nomads’ culture from a touristic and aesthetic viewpoint. The literature shows that well-known cultural tourist attractions possess particular characteristics to become a successful and sustainable product / destination. In this paper, we argue that Iranian pastoral nomads, from a geographical, social, cultural, and artistic perspective, have numerous peculiar characteristics which are attractive to international tourists. Internationally, while the sociocultural frameworks of nomadic societies are at risk of extinction when confronted with factors like globalisation, Nomads and nomadic lifestyle in Iran, seems to be less exposed to cultural, economic, and social changes. Fortunately, the main foundations of nomadic life in Iran, based on mobility, free movement and self-sufficiency are still practiced. Iranian nomadic tribes migrate seasonally twice a year, the phenomenon being called Kooch - the most fundamental characteristic of nomads in Iran. We present an argument that Kooch and other nomadic activities are potential tourist products. Twice a year, these pastoral nomads move their ambulant houses and all their equipment, which has been designed in an extremely artistic and skilful way. This unique journey of mobile heritage makes Iranian nomads attractive to the eyes of outsiders. The potential symbiosis between nomadic heritage and tourism offers a genuine opportunity for the development of sustainable tourism.

The discussion of tour-guide training, which started in the 1990s in Türkiye has been taken up in the associated literature more than in any other country. No studies were previously carried out, however, to place the nearly-30-year-prolonged discussions in a historical framework and evaluate them. Yet, understanding the evolution of such training-related discussions has the potential to lead to remarkably useful information for future analyses of the subject. The purpose of the present research is to provide an overall evaluation of the literature about tourguide training in Türkiye. To this end, the literature was reviewed, and the issues addressed as well as the solutions proposed by the relevant studies were identified. The findings reveal that most of the major issues brought up in the early scholarship are still pertinent. They also indicate that the problems in tour-guide training have not subsided; on the contrary, those problems have increasingly varied in the meantime. Based on this judgment, the question of which philosophical and educational bases tour-guide training should be built upon has emerged as a significant matter of concern for future research, and some topics that need to be pursued have been determined.

In the present neoliberal market economy, the so-called free tours and their unlicensed tourist guides found the perfect environment to practice their activity, which is often criticised by licensed guides. The overall difference between the two types of guides is related to the fact that licensed guides have a formal specific education and training to do their job, sometimes complemented with continuous professional development, whereas free tours’ guides don’t. Therefore, several questions come to mind: Since unqualified guides are actually working without any training, should there be any formal education for tourist guides? How useful is formal and continuous training for tourist guides? Are we training tourist guides properly? This paper tries to answer these questions using the Portuguese case. Besides the documental research and the reference works used for the theoretical approach, tour operators and higher institutions professors specialised in tourist guide training were questioned to develop the research. Then, a meeting with a focus group constituted of 10 licensed tourist guides was carried out. The results show what is being done at present to develop quality guiding, but they also light the path for future tourist guide education and training both from an initial and continuous perspective.