The Needs for Language Skills Training for Tour Company Staff in the Thailand Tourism Industry: Managerial Perspectives

Announcing: Thitthongkam, Thavorn and John Walsh, “The Needs for Language Skills Training for Tour Company Staff in the Thailand Tourism Industry: Managerial Perspectives,” KKU Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences (Business and Economics), Vol.10, No.1 (January-June, 2011), pp.140-59.

Abstract

This study investigates the perspectives of tourism managers concerning the needs for language skills training for tour company staff in the Thailand tourism industry and to study the problems of tour companies with respect to language skills training. In-depth, face-to-face and telephone qualitative interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 30 tour-company managers. The sample consisted of randomly-chosen tour companies based in Bangkokand listed in the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) database. A semi-structured interview form was created as a research instrument by the researchers. The study was supplemented by additional interviews with managers of language schools and relevant officials at the TAT, together with analysis of existing secondary data sources including books, journals and online databases. The study shows that organizations should cooperate with each other so as to improve the quality of services to meet tourists’ expectations and levels of satisfaction and, also, that language skills training helps improve the quality of services overall.

 Keywords: Language training, Tourism companies, Tourism industry, Tourist satisfaction, Quality of service

It is probably available online as well but I cannot access the site at the moment.

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