An Investigation of Intercultural Communication Competence of Thai Tour Guides in Bangkok
King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand
ABSTRACT
In the age of a borderless world, many transnational corporations emphasize cultural diversity as a part of the company policy in requiring employees to be interculturally competent (Spitzberg & Cupach, 2009). Individuals that are knowledgeable of social systems or are able to behave appropriately among different cultures become the striking point that employers need (Bremer, 2006; Deardorff & Hunter, 2006; Hulstrand, 2008). Especially in Thailand, tour companies have launched tour programs to meet the tourists’ demands, and therefore, tour guides should be interculturally competent so that they can deliver memorable experiences to tourists. This study aims to investigate the self-awareness regarding intercultural communication competence of Thai tour guides working in Bangkok. The study also makes an attempt to ascertain the tourists’ perceptions of the tour guides’ intercultural communication competence as well as to explore the differences between the tour guides’ self-awareness of their intercultural communication competence and the tourists’ perceptions of the tour guides’ intercultural communication competence. The participants of this study were 50 tour guides and 50 foreign tourists that were visiting Bangkok by participating in a city tour program. Data were collected using a self-assessment questionnaire for investigating the tour guides’ self-awareness of intercultural communication competence and a questionnaire for studying the tourists’ perceptions of the tour guides’ intercultural communication competence. The statistics used in this study were descriptive statistics and independent-samples t-test. The results indicated that the tour guides reported having high competency in intercultural communication competence and the tourists’ perceptions of the tour guides’ intercultural communication competence were at a high level. In addition, there was a significant difference in the mean scores between the tour guides’ self-awareness of intercultural communication competence and the tourists’ perceptions of the tour guides’ intercultural communication competence.
KEYWORDS
Intercultural communication competence, Intercultural communication competence assessment, Tour guides