(Luận văn thạc sĩ) perceptions of vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles by western tourists

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES HOÀNG THỊ THANH PERCEPTIONS OF VIETNAMESE TOUR GUIDES’ COMMUNICATION STYLES BY WESTERN TOURISTS (QUAN ĐIỂM CỦA KHÁCH DU LỊCH PHƯƠNG TÂY VỀ PHONG CÁCH GIAO TIẾP CỦA HƯỚNG DẪN VIÊN VIỆT NAM) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English linguistics Code: 60220201 HANOI – 2016 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES HOÀNG THỊ THANH PERCEPTIONS OF VIETNAMESE TOUR GUIDES’ COMMUNICATION STYLES BY WESTERN TOURISTS (QUAN ĐIỂM CỦA KHÁCH DU LỊCH PHƯƠNG TÂY VỀ PHONG CÁCH GIAO TIẾP CỦA HƯỚNG DẪN VIÊN VIỆT NAM) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English linguistics Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Prof Nguyễn Hòa HANOI - 2016 DECLARATION I hereby, certify the thesis entitled ―Perceptions of Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles by Western tourists‖ is the result of my own work as the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi The thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other universities or intuitions I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library can be accessible for the purposes of study and research November, 2016 Hoang Thi Thanh I ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to show my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this thesis I would like to give my sincere thanks to the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, ULIS, VNU for giving me permission to commence and go ahead with this M.A thesis and to use departmental data I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Prof Nguyễn Hòa, whose encouragement, guidance and support enabled me to develop an understanding of the subject and to accomplish the final version of the thesis as expected This thesis would not be possible were it not for my lecturers in the M.A course, namely Prof Dr Hoàng Văn Vân, Assoc Prof Lâm Quang Đông, Assoc Prof Dr Lê Hùng Tiến, Prof Nguyễn Quang, Dr Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm, Dr Nguyễn Huy Kỷ, Assoc Prof Ngơ Hữu Hồng, Assoc Prof Lê Văn Canh, Dr Huỳnh Anh Tuấn, Dr Đỗ Thị Thanh Hà and Dr Mai Thị Loan I would like to thank them for their interesting lectures, devotion, assistance and valuable hints Especially, I owe my deepest gratitude to my parents whose endless love and encouragement helped me finish this work Lastly, I offer my regards and blessings to all of those who supported me in any respect during the completion of the study II ABSTRACT The research firstly scrutinizes the perceptions by Western tourists of their ideal tour guide to find out what they expect from local tour guides As the next phase, the communication style assessment process was carried out to explore the communication styles of the Vietnamese tour guides perceived by the tourists These styles are then collated with the levels of satisfaction to unfold the relationship between them Thanks to the mixed methods of qualitative and quantitative with the use of questionnaire survey and unstructured interviews, the research records the presence of three out of four communication styles among the Vietnamese tour guides, namely Reflective, Emotive and Supportive which are perceived by the Western tourists The visual statistic shows that of the three communication styles, tour guides of the Emotive style achieve a much higher level of satisfaction in compared with the other two III TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION I ACKNOWLEDGEMENT II ABSTRACT III LIST OF FIGURES VI LIST OF TABLES VI CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE 1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 1.6 DESIGN OF THE STUDY CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 TOURISM IN VIETNAM 2.1.1 An overview of Vietnamese tourism status 2.1.2 Tour guides in Vietnam 2.1.2.1 Tour guide’s position in tourism development 2.1.2.2 An overview of tour guide jobs in Vietnam 2.2 INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 2.2.1 What is Culture? 2.2.2 Perception 11 2.3 COMMUNICATION STYLES 12 2.3.1 Communication style review 12 2.3.2 Communication-style model 13 2.3.2.1 The Dominance Continuum 13 2.3.2.2 The Sociability Continuum 14 IV 2.3.2.3 2.4 Four Styles of Communication 15 REVIEW OF RELATED WORKS 20 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 25 3.1 Participants 25 3.2 Research methods 25 3.3 Data gathering instruments 26 3.4 Procedure 26 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 29 4.1 Population of the study 29 4.2 Perceptions of Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles by Western tourists 31 4.2.1 Statistical description of the customers’ satisfaction 31 4.2.2 Perceptions of Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles by Western tourists 32 4.2.3 Relationship between Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles and tourist satisfaction 36 4.2.4 Participants’ comments and interviews 39 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 42 5.1 RECAPITULATION 42 5.2 CONCLUSIONS 43 5.3 IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY 45 5.4 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 46 5.5 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES 47 REFERENCES i APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE vii Section : Survey about Vietnamese tour guides vii APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTIONS ix V LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES LIST OF FIGURES Figure - The dominance continuum 13 Figure - The Dominance Indicator 14 Figure - The sociability continuum 14 Figure - The Sociability Indicator 15 Figure - The partial outline of the communication styles 16 Figure - The Emotive Style combines high sociability and high dominance 17 Figure - The Directive Style combines high dominance and low sociability 17 Figure - The Reflective Style combines low dominance and low sociability 18 Figure - The Supportive Style combines low dominance and high sociability 20 Figure 10 - Satisfaction levels of tourists towards their most recent tour guides 32 Figure 11 - The four communication style model 33 Figure 12 - Tour guides’ dominance tendency 33 Figure 13 - Tour guides’ sociability tendency 34 Figure 14 - Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles by percentage 35 Figure 15 - Relationship between tour guides’ communication styles and tourist satisfaction 37 LIST OF TABLES Table - Participants’ demographic illustration 30 VI CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE It is no doubt that of all tourism-related jobs in Vietnam, tour guides play a salient role in the success of the tours A tour guide who leaves a good impression will facilitate tour activities; in contrast, an unfavorable impression may lead to a cancellation, or even worse, a poor reputation that will affect future visitors by words of mouth or through internet reviews According to Manning G L (2012) “The perceptions that others form about us are based on what they observe us saying and doing They have no way of knowing our innermost thoughts and feelings, so they make decisions about us based on what they see and hear The patterns of behavior that others observe can be called communication style” (Manning G.L., 2012) This is more likely to be true in guided tours when a tour guide has to take responsibility for a number of tourists hence has not much time to interact with them individually Therefore, the feelings of tourists about a guide are majorly based on their perceptions of that guide’s behaviors In the recent years, Vietnamese tourism industry has witnessed dramatic growth with the increasing number of international tourist arrivals through the years However, the human resource management in tourism sectors, including tour guide training has not met the required international standard (Saigon Economic Times, 2016) The common problems of many English speaking tour guides are the shortage of either English competence or cultural and historical knowledge or even both, followed by poor communication styles While many tour guides are appreciated for their hospitability and good communications with tourists, others sometimes cause an impression of being distant or dominant over their tourists Some researches on the expectations of tourists about their tour guides show that ―not only the tour guides are expected to be professional and knowledgeable but also friendly and not concerned for their own profit‖ (Li et al, 2011) Consequently, not only satisfaction is likely to be affected by the communication style of a communication partner, but also the likelihood that one shares knowledge with a communication partner (De Vries, 2009) This has become more significant due to the tourist attraction policy of the Government since last July, allowing a 15-day visa exemption for 13 countries which are mostly from Europe, predicting an influx of Western tourists into Vietnam If the tour guides are not aware of their strengths and weaknesses to improve their performance soon, it could result in the reduction of a certain number of tourists due to their dissatisfaction With four years of experience in hospitality, including two years working as a professional tour guide, I am well aware of the above problems which can be encountered by any tour guides Hence, this research is an attempt to unfold 1) the tourists’ perception of the local tour guide’s communication styles and 2) their possible effects on tourists’ satisfaction As an alternative, tour guides can be aware of their own communication style, how it affects their customers’ feelings and hence adjusts their behaviors accordingly 1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY For a tour guide, it is essential to create a good impression on their tourists However, in fact, despite the tour guides’ great effort to take care of their customers, hardly are they aware of their communication style and how it can affect their customers’ satisfaction In addition, tourists not often stay in one place too long hence the chance of profound understanding their tour guides is almost impossible Therefore, their evaluation of tour guides is mainly based on how they perceive about the guides’ attitudes and behaviors This perception is culturally determined and in turn influences the way they communicate with the tour guides Following this assumption, the study aims at: 1) Investigating the Western tourists’ perception of Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles in terms of tour satisfaction 2) Investigating the possible relationship between Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles and tourists’ satisfaction given to the participants to indicate the communication styles of their local tour guides In the next step, unstructured interviews were held together with the survey in order to obtain participants’ reflection on what make them less satisfied with their tour guides Collected data were then calculated and grouped Employing the quantitative method at this stage, the researcher sought to add to the answers to the first research question and also find out the response to the last research question in terms of the relationship between the communication styles and tourists’ satisfaction The findings were then drawn from the data analysis and synthesis to deal with the research questions First, most of the participants said that they were either very satisfied or satisfied with their Vietnamese tour guide while only one claimed that they felt neutral about their guide’s performance In addition, there communication styles namely Supportive, Reflective and Directive were recognized according to the Communication style model by Manning (2012) The quantitative data also proved that there is an underlying relationship between the tour guide’s communication style and the tourists’ satisfaction when the Emotive tour guides were recorded with the considerably high level of satisfaction in compared with the other two styles However, the comments and interviews reveal that the Western tourists’ satisfaction was affected by the English competence and the knowledge of the tour guide as well 5.2 CONCLUSIONS The study aims to investigate the perceptions by Western tourists about Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles and to verify the relationship between the tour guides’ communication styles and tourists’ satisfaction Firstly, the findings reveal the perceptions of tourists about an ideal tour guide Besides having adequate English competence and cultural knowledge, good tour guides also need to have good communication styles as being friendly, honest and trustworthy This reflects the common needs of tourists when being in an exotic 43 environment: need for interpersonal relationship, belief and safety Among the three mentioned communication styles, most of participants expected to be treated in a friendly way by their guide, which is necessary to develop further conversations In addition, although English competence and knowledge are two requisites of guiding job, an appropriate communication style is considered to be fundamental to the satisfaction of tourists Therefore, understanding tourists’ perceptions of a good tour guide will give the local tour guides important implications to better their performance as to satisfy Western tourists Secondly, the survey questionnaire shows that most of the Vietnamese tour guides are perceived to be lower in dominance and higher in sociability, means that they are cooperative, supportive and less aggressive with their tourists In addition, the local tour guides are perceived to be of the Emotive, Reflective and Supportive styles without any one recognized as Directive This is in accordance with the cultural values of Vietnamese people with which Vietnamese are expected to be friendly and treat the foreigners like hosts to guests Finally, the study has confirmed that there exists a relationship between Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles and Western tourists’ satisfaction and that there are some styles which are preferred than the others As a result, Emotive was found to be the preferred style within the scope of this study Positively, the findings show the high satisfaction level towards the Vietnamese tour guides from Western tourists with most of the check marks falling on ―very satisfied‖ and ―satisfied‖ categories Only one opinion was ―neutral‖ and no opinions were ―dissatisfied‖ or ―very dissatisfied‖ The findings also illustrate that there is a significant difference between the level of satisfaction to the Emotive tour guide in compared to the Supportives and the Reflectives in which the Emotives gained the utmost satisfaction most of the times The Emotives are considered to be very energetic and often express their emotions very freely without hiding inside These features seem to match the tourists’ expectations of an ideal tour guide at the previous 44 section as to be honest, trustworthy and friendly This may be an explanation for the very high satisfaction from the tourists to them Lastly, the comments and interviews are also helpful to unfold the ideas lying under the participants’ choices of answers to the questionnaire All the comments show higher requirements towards the tour guides in terms of English competence and knowledge However, despite their comments on inadequate knowledge of the tour guide, they still feel satisfied with them This reflects that the communication styles of tour guide decide the tourists’ satisfaction with the language and knowledge as the basis However, between them there should be a cooperative relationship to make the tour guide’s performance better as a whole and language competence and tourism knowledge also has an effect on the satisfaction of the Western tourists 5.3 IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY Tour guide performance is one of the key factors to the success of a tour This study has focused on tour guide performance from the Western tourist’s perspective and its effects on tourist satisfaction The results of this study suggest a number of implications for tour guide, tour manager/tour operator and tourism educators First and foremost, the study provides some guidance on strategies from the tour guide performance perspective The current research has also indicated that good tour guides need to have adequate English competence and knowledge; however, what is more important is to have an appropriate communication styles to tourists In terms of this issue, it can be said that tour guides should practice showing their honest, trustworthiness and friendliness that lead to the reliability from foreign tourists For this reason, the role of tour manager/tour operator is also very important in providing training programs for tour guides Tour guides, moreover, should attach much importance to their clothes to be neat and appropriate Next, in terms of professional communication styles, tour guides need to be aware of their own communication styles to define their strengths and weaknesses The research has also proved that tour guides’ communication styles have a relationship 45 with tourists’ satisfaction; therefore, with each specific group of tourists, they need to adjust their communication behaviors accordingly to satisfy their customers Tour manager/tour operators, therefore, might also provide internal short courses to improve the interpersonal communication skills for tour guides Last but not least, the study can be useful for educators in tourism training to pay more attention to improving the communication styles for their learners since it is under-evaluated in Vietnam They can include the communication style education as a part of a subject in their training program, or can hold separate workshops on communication styles Learners thereby can identify their own styles as well as the others’ ones to communicate more effectively Especially, if potential tour guides notice the preferred communication styles by most tourists, they can focus more on the verbal and non-verbal behaviors of those styles to adjust themselves for a better guiding job in the future 5.4 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY Despite the devotion of time and effort, the research cannot avoid some shortcomings as below Firstly, due to time and resource constraints, a limitation of the study was a small population In addition, the population shows a rather imbalanced distinction with reference to age and nationality The subjects comprised of 27 Westerners with a dominance of 12 participants from Britain; on the other hand, most of the participants are within the age of 26-35 or above 50 thus limit the representation of findings to a broader and more diverse population Secondly, the population is only limited to the Western tourists with the questionnaire of complex English literacy, thereby leading to a lack of voices from tourists of other regions and lower English proficiency As a result, the findings of the research hardly represent the perceptions of the international tourists at a large scale 46 Lastly, as a feature of the survey questionnaire in which the questions created by the researcher are rather subjective and reflect only the perception of the Western tourists about the tour guides after a short time of interaction Therefore, the findings not reflect completely about the reality of the Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles as a whole Briefly speaking, the limited time and participants partly impede the validity of the research 5.5 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES Since tourism has been an emerging topic in the world and even in Vietnam’s research literature, other researchers who are interested in the same subject can develop the study from other perspectives First, the subject of communication styles of tour guide can be conducted with domestic tourists instead of Western tourists as in this research This is also useful because domestic tourists account for a huge part in the tourism proportion yet are still novel as the topic of research In addition, domestic tourists have different expectations and perceptions from Western ones; therefore, this maybe a fertile land for researchers who delve into tourism literature to exploit Furthermore, if time allows, researchers can investigate the 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How old are you? ☐Under 18 ☐ 18 – 25 ☐ 26 – 35 ☐ 36 – 50 ☐Above 50 What is your highest level of education? ☐ Student ☐Bachelor ☐Master ☐Ph.D ☐Others How often you travel? ☐A lot ☐Often ☐ Sometimes ☐Rarely ☐Never What is your nationality? Where was your last trip in Vietnam? _ Thank you very much for your time! viii APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTIONS I = Interviewer P = Participant INTERVIEW (Question – Section 1) I: I can see you add a criteria here as ―authentic‖ Can you explain? P: Yes, because I think the local tour guide should show his original – or indigenous values when communicating with tourists But my tour guide used his nickname to introduce about himself I: Nickname? Is it Vietnamese name? P: No…his name is Thin (Thinh) But he called himself ―Tom‖ – a Western name That does not show his authenticity at all, and his honesty to us I: Thank you INTERVIEW (Question – Section 1) I: What you mean by ―more flexible?‖ P: Yes…our guide took us to the cave…but all the boat came there together on the same moment And then we did…ah…a quarter…fifteen minutes And there was no traffic jam So it would be a lot easier to enter the cave…but he said…No I: So you want him to wait for the crowd to disperse to enter the cave but he didn’t want, right? He is stuck to the program? P: Yes…He had the program…but he also had to adapt to the circumstances It’s flexibility ix INTERVIEW (Question – Section 1) I: Can you let me know about your tour guide? He didn’t explain about the history to you? P: Well…we took a city tour in Hanoi for one day I asked him about the places inside Ho Chi Minh’s complex Like the Mausoleum and Ho Chi Minh’s life But he didn’t know the answers so he turned to a different topic I: Different topic? P: Yes…he introduced about a small souvenir shop nearby and told us to drop by after the trip! [laugh] INTERVIEW (Question – Section 1) I: I see that you are satisfied with your tour guide Is that the guide in Halong bay? P: Yes I: However you are not satisfied with his background knowledge? P: Well…It’s not that I wasn’t satisfied It’s that I would have been MORE satisfied There was much time of the tour when the guide could have pointed out the areas of interest but he didn’t…he didn’t talk about it But I later researched, and I found out areas of interest But I wish the guide would have said ―A movie was made here‖…or something like that…You know? I: Yeah…So that’s the only thing that you think could have been better right? P: Yes It is I: Thank you so much! x ... feedback from the Western tourists 4.2.2 Perceptions of Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles by Western tourists To identify the tour guides’ communication styles perceived by the participants,... 31 4.2.2 Perceptions of Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles by Western tourists 32 4.2.3 Relationship between Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles and tourist satisfaction... DISCUSSIONS The purpose of the study was to exemplify the perceptions by tourists of Vietnamese tour guides’ communication styles thereby to measure the influence of such styles on tourists? ?? satisfaction