Abstract
The tour guide is a key figure in the tourism industry and plays an important role, especially in group tourism. Overshadowed by the obvious importance of the tourists, tour guides have to a lesser extent entered the tourism research agenda in recent decades. As tour guide research in general is developing and maturing, we also see an increase of Chinese tour guide studies which are so far geographically concentrated in Asia. While the profiles of Chinese tour guides in many destinations, especially outside Asia, remain understudied, a comprehensive literature review suggests that most tour guide studies do not take into consideration the geographic context and its various sociocultural factors in the research. After recognizing the pivotal influences of Chinese tour guides in Chinese outbound tourism, this research looks into this group of people in the context of New Zealand. New Zealand was ranked as one of the most popular outbound destinations for Chinese tourists during the past decade. The research adopts a socio-cultural perspective and interpretivist paradigm which is put into a Chinese context to comprehensively examine Chinese tour guides’ skills, traits and virtues. Endeavoring to understand the guides’ values, norms, relations and moralities, this research aims to answer the question: What makes a ‘good’ Chinese tour guide?
This thesis first presents a comprehensive literature review on tour guide research with a focus on Chinese tour guide studies. This brings to light the issues of the hegemony of the Eurocentric paradigms and the business-oriented and service-centered theories that prevail in tour guide research. The conclusion is drawn from the literature review that research on Chinese tour guides should be approached in a socio-culturally distinctive way. After elaborating the paradigmatic considerations and ethnographic characteristics (embodiment and reflexivity) of the research, the thesis goes on to discuss the methods employed, namely interviews, participant observation, and social media (WeChat) ethnography. Thematic analysis was conducted in order to identify the key themes interpreted from the data, while careful deliberation was given to the necessary language and cultural translation work in the analysis process.
The main findings are categorized into four themes: Chinese tour guides’ hard skills and knowledge; soft skills and knowledge; guanxi (reciprocal interpersonal connections and relationships); and moral and philosophical reflections which suggest the human values and virtues that a ‘good’ tour guide embodies. Chinese tour guides’ hard skills and knowledge are fundamental and instrumental at the basic level. They are discussed in terms of: driving skills and knowledge; language skills; gendered skills and knowledge; management skills; marketing skills; local knowledge; and ICT skills and knowledge. Chinese tour guides’ soft skills and knowledge are a combination of their attitudes, work ethic, communication skills, personality traits and emotional intelligence. The research also identifies and addresses the predominant Chinese sociocultural concept and dynamic of guanxi, which is closely related to Chinese tour guides’ reciprocal interpersonal relationships with tourists, tour suppliers, tourism employees, and local communities.
Finally, moving beyond extant tour guide research which has invariably embraced and foregrounded professionalism, this thesis assembles the above findings into an overall argument that the essence of humanity, which includes values, interests, and dignity, should be put before professionalism. Tour guides’ moral and philosophical reflections allow themselves and encourage others to embrace and explore their possibilities and potentials (e.g. human capacity and responsibility) through critical thinking, philosophical debating, and moral reasoning. A ‘good’ tour guide should, in essence, be ‘an authentic and complete human being’ who is full of human values and virtues such as compassion, empathy, care, respect, grace and love. Ultimately, tour guides’ job can have great potential to influence and enhance the life of themselves and others. It can encourage us to consider the meaning of life, promote our wellbeing, and pursue the universal goal of happiness. This then suggests overall that tourism provides an ideal metaphorical context in which we can continuously re-think and recalibrate our relationships with others in order to bring abstract human values and virtues into the concrete practices of life and work.