Conflict management styles of professional tour guides: a cluster analysis

Abstract

Professional tour guides play an important role in tourist satisfaction and the business success of tour agencies/operators, since they are directly in contact with tourists and are responsible for managing the tours. However, tour guides may experience some conflicts with tourists. For resolving the conflicts, tour guides need to follow the most appropriate conflict management styles. The objective of this study is to understand dominant conflict management styles of tour guides. A survey, targeting professional tour guides living in Antalya, Turkey was conducted with this purpose. By an adapted version of Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (ROCI-II), conflict management styles of tour guides were identified. Following, tour guides were categorized according to their conflict management styles as the: Typical Mediators, Young Rule Makers, and Tolerant Experts, representing different demographics and conflict management styles. Additional inter-group differences were revealed according to the features of tours that they guided and their working preferences.