Abstract:
The purposes of this research were: (1) to investigate the desirable characteristics of tour leaders and (2) to create guidelines for the development of tour leaders competencies. Samples consisted of 400 Thai travelers responding for questionnaires, 20 entrepreneurs and tour leaders for interviewing, and 6 people for focus group. Research instruments, questionnaire and interview form, were used for collecting data. And then, the data were statistically analyzed by means of descriptive statistics in terms of frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation. While, the interview and focus group results were qualitatively analyzed by content analysis technique. The result indicated that:The respondents had opinions on the desirable characteristics of tour leaders competencies in the fields of knowledge and skills at high level, but in the fields of personal characteristics was at the highest level. The results were processed to create guidelines for development of tour leaders competencies. The guidelines were as follows: 1)Good quality and committed persons who show up to be tour leaders should be selected 2)The standard curriculum should be used for training the selected persons. 3)The present tour leaders should be trained for augmenting their knowledge, and should be continuously encouraged for self-development all the time