ANALYSIS OF THE PERCEPTIONS OF TOURIST GUIDENCE ASSOCIATE DEGREE STUDENTS ABOUT "TRAVEL CONCEPT" THROUGH METAPHOR METHOD

Abstract

Tourist guides, who enliven to the touristic experiences of tourists with their intellectual knowledge, personality traits and behaviors and create value in the formation of unforgettable holiday memories of tourists, are important actors of the tourism sector. In the study, the opinions of the students who are candidates to become tourist guides about the "travel concept", which is almost equivalent to human history, were wondered. Participants' travel experiences, emotions, thoughts, meanings they attribute and how they perceive them were considered important in terms of shaping their future behavior. With this study, it is aimed to reveal the perceptions of the tourist guidance associate degree students about the "travel concept" through metaphor analysis. The target population of the research consists of the students who studied in the Tourist Guidance Program of Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Marmaris Tourism Vocational School and enrolled in courses in the Fall Semester of 2019-2020. The data were obtained from tourist guidance students who were at the school between 17 November and 28 November 2019 by using a semi-structured questionnaire and convenience sampling method. Among the "103" questionnaires, the "1" questionnaire form was excluded from the evaluation because the source of the metaphor was not expressed. In the study, a phenomenology research design was used in order to reveal the common meanings and perceptions underlying the travel concepts of the participants. The data obtained from the “102” participants were subjected to metaphor analysis, and the metaphors whose themes were revealed were divided into categories considering the source-metaphor relationship. In the research; the "85" metaphors about "travel concept" have been developed. Metaphors were classified under “12” categories; The themes of "Perception of Learning by Experiencing" and " Perception of Well Being" came to the fore as the most metaphor-generated themes. In addition, it was determined that “82” of the developed metaphors contain positive perceptions and “3” of the metaphors contain negative perceptions