BURNOUT LEVEL OF TOURIST GUIDES: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY
Yalçın Arslantürk, M. Tuna Üner
DOI: 10.35666/25662880.2016.2.21
UDC: 380.834-051:159.944.4(560)
Abstract: Burnout syndrome affects the employee performance and therefore service quality of a company. Especially, when it comes to tourism-related labour, in this case tour guides, pivotal interface in tourism industry, it is of great importance to examine the extent of burnout in an occupation which not only depends on physical strength but intellectual as well. Although the subject of burnout has well been documented and examined in other occupations, to date, there has been no single study into the burnout level and the concept of burnout with specific reference to tour guides. On the other hand, since the issue of Law on Tourist Guide Occupation in 2012, tour guides, recognized by TUREB (Union of Tourist Guides’ Chamber) have become an obligatory part of package tours. This stipulates that tourist guides have to be licenced subsequent to training programs and packaged tours have to be attended by licenced tourist guides. This study was conducted to determine the burnout level of tourist guides. Following a comprehensive examination of the literature on burnout syndrome and tour guiding, this paper goes on with the method part. As data collection instrument, Copenhagen Burnout Inventory has been employed in this study. The number of the participants is 248 licenced tourist guides registered in Ankara Tourist Guides’ Chamber. The data gathered were analysed through statistical software packages and the results indicated that emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment in terms of sub-dimensions were found to have lower levels of burnout. In addition, rather than the personality factors, the burnout level was found out to be affected by work-related factors. Hence, it is suggested that organizational and job-related measures should be taken in order to decrease the level of burnout in tourist guides.
Key words: occupational burnout, tourist guide, Copenhagen Burnout Inventory