Evaluation of the Tour Guides’ Performance From Perspective of Foreign TouristsCase Study : (Yazd Province )

It is necessary to develop tourism, recognize strengths and weaknesses, strengthen strengths and eliminate weaknesses. Among the most important factors are guides who interact directly with tourists. Despite the importance of tour guides, many assessments of the professional status and satisfaction of tourists with their performance have not been reported. The best way to evaluate the performance of incoming tour guides is with foreign tourists. This research is based on the position of guides in providing services to tourists and the lack of research background in guiding literature to evaluate the performance of Iranian guides in 24 characteristics of professional skills, ethical characteristics and appearance characteristics of foreign tourists who visited in September 1998 , will pay. Data were collected from the opinions of 120 foreign tourists selected by the available sampling method by analysis of significance-performance analysis and analyzed by SPSS software. The results showed that among the important priorities of foreign tourists, guides are more weak in terms of professional characteristics than moral and physical characteristics. The correct pronunciation of words and the power of excellent speech, solving problems in the tour, introducing trusted stores, were very important for foreign tourists, and the guides had low performance in these features. Also, the characteristics of host culture and level of knowledge about the destination, friendly behavior, honesty, patience, and mastery of international language and local languages ​​are important for foreign tourists, and the guides have performed well in these characteristics.