Periódico: Tourism and Hospitality International Journal
Fonte: Tourism and Hospitality International Journal ; Vol. 3 No. 1 (2014): September 2014 [4th Edition]; 12-29
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Resumo: The tour guide is one of the professionals who best represent the image of tourism, so it is important to understand how the services provided by these professionals contribute to the development of localities. The city of João Pessoa, capital of the State of Paraíba, has a vocation for the tourist activity and has been showing a solid growth. In this context, the work is justified by the need to investigate the command of languages by tour guides of the city. The study, exploratory-descriptive type was developed from quantitative approach, held with the population of tourist guides, registered in EMBRATUR (Brazilian Institute of Tourism), and who declared that exercise the activity in the city of João Pessoa. In relation to the total of 165 registered guides, it was found that the largest portion is composed of men, it was also observed that only a small portion of the guides have fluency in a language other than Portuguese, being the Spanish and English languages that presented the highest number of guides with domain. The study also observed that, although the indicators referring to tourism are improving, it is basically due to domestic tourism, because the landings of foreign passengers at the airport of the city are still reduced. But, even in this scenario, we consider important the domain of languages by the tourism guides, once they must be prepared for a future demand of tourists coming from other countries. Learning a new language requires time and dedication and therefore cannot be assimilated in the very short term.
