An Exploratory Study Of Role Stress Of Tour Leader

• Main Authors: Huang, Chingyueh, 黃靖月
• Other Authors: Chang, Chingyu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/66355136569223877121

碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 觀光事業學系 === 100 === Group package tour (GPT) is found to be the preferred mode of outbound travel for most Asian tourists. Tour leader who needs to serve as tour guide is there to be performed multiple roles to satisfy the various expectations and demands from different stakeholders. It could be assumed that tour leader may have role stress when these demands are incompatible, ambiguous or difficult for them to achieve. Besides, role stress has been little studied in the area of tour leading. Hence, the major objectives of this study are to explore the relevant factors of tour leader role stress during the GPTs, and conceptualize the role stress faced by tour leader. From a qualitative research approach, individual in-depth interview with semi-structured type is an effective data collection method to be employed in this study. In total, 11 tour leaders were interviewed for this study. Findings identify several stress factors from four major stakeholders: tourists, the travel agency, service providers at the destination, and tour leaders themselves. The role stress factors from tourists are physical conditions, punctuality, extra side trips, unreasonable demands, dissimilar opinions, perception, emotion, and satisfaction; from the travel agency are sales quotas, service quality, and task uncertainty; from the service providers at the destination are dissimilar itinerary, drivers, meal arrangements, and overbooking; from the tour leaders themselves are competence, self-expectation, emotional labor, and family. Based on the results of this study, the suggestions and recommendations are provided to tour leader, academia, and travel agency to improve the effect of role stress, thereby enhancing the level of tour leader’s job satisfaction as well as tourist’s satisfaction and tour leader’s performances.