Language Roles and Model Tour Company in Enhancing Competitiveness in Tourism Industry

 

The objective focused on students’ activities planning for the model tour company. Lecturers are consultants to oversee the tasks assigned. Several activities are not only for entertainment and interest but also for wonderful experiences. They are useful for students who aim to work for tourism industry.

 

In addition, the institutions provide the model tour company for students to investigate and practice for their technical expertise and operational skills. They aim that after students’ graduation; the students will work more efficiently for the tourism industry. The tour company model helps students learn and face problems by themselves. They will have chances to solve those problems with their colleagues in the model tour company.

 

Some intuitions use the tour routes those have been certified by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) in the initial test permit a tour guide to create the way to make the model tour company. After the end of this project, students will be evaluated their work. It will be considered and approved for the issuance of license for a tour guide in the future. In addition, the model tour company also helps students to recognise the role of self-responsibility. The company set up to allocate a plurality of work which releases all parties must act together to achieve the goal. In short, tourism education institution in Thailand has the same objectives to set up the model tour company in their institutions. Those are prepared in the work skills for the students before they will access in the career and demand for students to acknowledge in the process and lead to student learning problems in operational tour and problems facing the tour were organised. This will lead to Thai tourism industry competitiveness.

 

2.7 The model tour company assessment

The students who organise the model tour company have to be evaluated about the performances, potentiality and competencies by qualified lecturers and the manager of each department. The assessment will evaluate all of the capabilities of each student who plays different role in the model tour company. It includes the capability in using foreign languages, especially students who play the role as tour guides.

 

Each student will be interviewed. The interview is conducted by lecturers and manager of the model tour company. Most of the interviewing issues would be about the roles in working in each department and the responsibilities. Each manager will be evaluated by the lecturers.

 

With respect to the capability’s evaluation in using foreign languages, this evaluation emphasises English, Chinese, Japanese, and French as major and common languages for global communication. As a result, students who work as tour guides are mostly considered to be evaluated in using languages. Foreign languages training, however, are provided for these students before they work as tour guides. These training include every part each language usage, but regularly focusing on speaking. They are conducted by tourism lecturers who are fluent in each language, and some foreign lecturers in the university. These trainings aim to review language skills for these students to be able to communicate professionally with the tourists who are foreigners. Consequently, these students who work as tour guides will be evaluated by monitoring them in their real working.

 

3. Methodology

This study was based on face-to-face qualitative interviews with a convenience sample of 30 managers, 4 lecturers, 20 tour guides, and 80 students. They were selected on a random basis. The samples were in charge of the model tour company. The aims were to examine the roles of language and the importance of language to the tour company model, to investigate the guidelines and the process in organising the tour company model, and to study problems and solutions in managing the tour company model so as to increase competitiveness for the Thai tourism industry.

 

A set of interview guidelines was created as a research instrument by the researcher. It consists of four parts. The first part was aimed to obtain information about the importance of language roles and managing the model tour company. The second part related directly to language roles. The third part was designed to acquire guidelines and process of managing the model tour company. For the last part, it was designed to study problems and solutions.

 

After designing a set of interview guidelines, it was given to experts in designing the interview guideline to consider. The aim was to determine whether wording, question order and other issues were relevant and understandable for interviewees. Some minor adjustments were made to the interview guidelines as a result. Then interviews were conducted. It was approximately 40-60 minutes to interview the tour company’s managers, tour guides, and including lecturers. It was approximately 30-40 minutes to interview each student because they had less experience in working in the real situations. Explaining objectives started the interviews.

 

Every interviewee was pleased, willing to answer the questions, and provided necessary information. The interviews were conducted in Thai as all interviewees were Thai, so interviewing in Thai was convenient and straightforward to get accurate information. The interviews were recorded. Later, they were transliterated for accurate analysis.

 

 All the answers were sorted out in accordance with the objectives after finishing the interviews, and then all suitable answers to each question would be chosen to adopt for the research findings. The limitation of this study was considered as the questions using in the interviews, which were open-ended questions, so they had made the interviewees to think a lot before answering. The future research would benefit by having more concise interviewing to save time in the interview. Another limitation was about the interviews. They were conducted with only one group of students who had first experience in managing the model tour company. A larger sample might also be positive. Supplementary sources such as books, journals and websites are included.

 

4. Research findings

The research findings are divided into four parts: (1) the interviewees’ perspective about the importance of language roles and managing the model tour company, (2) the role of language in the model tour company, and (3) guidelines and process of managing the model tour company, and (4) the problems and solutions.

 

4.1 Interviewees’ perspective about the importance of language roles and managing the model tour company

The informants had a positive attitude toward the model tour company managing. They obtained advantages through the model tour company managing. The informants had a good chance to experience of their line of business. They learned how to work with others both inside and outside the company. The managers, the lecturers, and the tour guides voted unanimously that managing the model tour company granted the significance experience to students because the students learned by doing. They also pointed out that managing the model tour company was very motivating. It facilitated the students to recognise how to run tour business suitably.

 

4,2 The role of language in the model tour company

Language plays a role in communication. It helps people to understand each other. People share ideas and understand one another by means of language. Language roles make work easy, and help increasing working abilities (Cohen, 1996).

 

In the model tour company, language plays an important role because students need to communicate. It is important that they used language to communicate among group members, to arrange meetings and to make plans. If students do not understand the language, many problems might occur in the model tour company. In model tour company management, organisation charts and duties were contrived. Everyone wants to know and understand other departments. They could work corporately. The informants pointed out that students could manage their companies very effectively. Sometimes, students needed to contact or to corporate with other departments where language skills are needed. People from the Operation Department should know that all employees are required to communicate using foreign language. All staff in the model tour company should understand other departments’ nature, so they could get the right idea about them. All staff who wanted to contact some departments, Operation Department as an example, has to speak foreign language as a principal.

 

It is emphasised that language plays an important role for the model tour company. In the model tour company, students need to impress their tourists and gain trust for the model tour company. If the student staff only speak the native language, the international tourists will not understand them and feel negative. Also, students need to understand the international tourists’ cultures. Otherwise, they will loose international tourists’ trust. In other words, if the student staff understand and can communicate with tourists in their language and understand the tourists’ cultures, the tourists will feel more satisfied. The tourists might return to use the services again.

 

The model tour company prepares staff with the third language skills; Chinese, Japanese, and French. Speaking only English is not enough in managing the model tour company because there are international tourists who cannot speak English or Thai. The model tour company concerned might organise language training to staff. In brief, everyone is the main part to impulse the company and brings it to success. A company that lacks of collaboration may lead to failure. In contrast, any company works as a team and get the cooperation from the members will certainly have a bright future.

 

Focusing on the role of language in the model tour company, the informants highlighted that language is a key for managing the model tour company, particularly for communication. They also used the language to correspond in various manners: face-to-face interaction, on phone, giving information to tourists, booking restaurants, and negotiating with suppliers.

 

Based on the tour managers and the tour guides, language plays a vigorous role for colleagues both talking with staff and tourists. The informants stated that they were a key part that helped upgrade and generate good image to the company. Additionally, the informants studied cultures of major tourists. Language also plays role in creating the first impression for tourism industry, and this will boost competitiveness in the Thai tourism industry.

 

4.3 Guidelines and process of the model tour company

Due to the high competition in the Thai tourism industry that has been increasing recently from several factors such as politics and global economic, many tour companies are changing their strategies (Henderson, 2007). Each tour company tries to offer its best selection to tourists. To operate the company at its highest possibility, experienced and skilful employees are needed. Unfortunately, many new graduates who are equipped with their knowledge in tourism industry are unable to join those tour companies as they are inexperienced and unskilful.

 

Sripatum University is one of the universities in Thailand that emphasises on tourism education. Many students majoring in Hotel and Tourism Management in the Faculty of Liberal Arts are interested in this managing model tour company as they hope the knowledge and experience will provide a bright future ahead. In fact, they realised that it is hard to find a job without experiences and skills. Solving this problem, the university offers many necessary courses related to tourism education to help its students with useful expertise and practical experiences. The university provides the Tour Package course as an example. Its main objective is to give students some overview of their future careers. Students are required to study and manage the model tour company. The objective of the company is changing according to the current need of the tourism market. Not only students are studying how the model tour company is managed but also practice in real situations. This is because both knowledge and skills are important to tourism industry.

 

Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sripatum University sets up the model tour company in the same way as the real company is done. Only one different fact is that it is not a registered company, so every managing model tour company is operating under the brand of Sripatum University. It helps students to practice and train in the model tour company management before their graduation from the university. The main objectives of studying the course are: (1) to get students aware of principles and methodology of the tour, (2) to encourage students to know the character of problems and methods of solution in organising, (3) to provide students with useful knowledge and guidance for future career.

 

Each semester, students will set up 5 to 6 companies as the model tour companies. It depends on the number of students who register for the course. Although, there are a lot of companies and numbers of people, but students want to share their duties and responsibilities with each other. In order to corporate in the model tour company management, every company consists of seven departments: Administration Department, Planning Department, Sales and Marketing Department, Operation Department, Transportation Department, Document Department, and Finance Department.

 

Administration Department controls and runs the company. Planning Department sets tour programs, including price of tour programs and survey new tourism places. This department will bring new tourism places to present in the meeting. Sale and Marketing Department is important to the company because the department has to contact and offer tour programs to tourists directly. People who work in this department should have the ability to approach tourists and sell tour packages. Operation Department deals with tourists when they guide them to visit interesting places. Tour guides and staff will provide all things to make tourists feel comfortable during the tour. Transportation Department contacts the vehicles which will take the tourists to their destinations on the tour route. Documentary Department manages all documents in the company; this department will provide important documents in running a business and prepare the documents for the meetings. Finance Department checks and controls all of the model company expenses and budgets for each department. This section is very important because they can help anticipate the loss from running a model tour company. As a reason, Sripatum University provides the managing model tour company for students so as to encourage students to learn how to manage the tour company. This helps students to improve the management skills and gain experience.

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Figure 1: The Organisation Chart of the model tour company at Sripatum University

 

Every company has a lecturer as a president. The lecturer is also being a consultant to the company operation and giving an approval of the project. The syllabus of the course is based on the book for the operating policy’s purposes only. The company’s objectives and management depend on students’ decisions in the meetings. The lecturer provides some samples from the real situations for students to solve. It helps students to understand the lesson and see a performance of a real tour company very clearly. This method gives students an opportunity to share ideas in a meeting. In each meeting, the president’s secretary reports minutes of the meeting. The minutes are important tools for the next meeting. The president’s secretary reports minutes of the last meeting to the president. If the president wants to give some suggestions, he will make an appointment among the managers of the departments to discuss some working process.

 

The model tour company management also has some rivals to compete like any other actual companies. The rivals are the management of other model tour companies, and students have to cooperate and manage their company to make it success. Their target tourists are lecturer and students on campus, and people in the city. Students normally use billboards and other media to promote their companies and to motivate potential tourists. In the model tour company management, they do not sell the tour package only to the Thai people but also to international tourists. Since tour packages are not expensive, so each model tour company can get a good member of tourists. Certainly, language plays important role in managing the model tour company, particularly for communication with international tourists and organisations. The university emphasises English, Chinese, Japanese, and French. Students have to have skills of these languages to communicate in the model tour company management, and use them in the real working.

 

4.4 The problems and solutions

The informants revealed that some staff cannot communicate with international tourists. Some of them do not have clear picture on how to manage the model tour company. The solutions to the problem were to improve staff. The companies provide the extra-training session. They recommended that educational institutions need to create activities for students to increase the language skills for working such as organising English camps, speaking contest, singing contest, debating, and having workshop.

 

5. Conclusion and recommendations

The research findings support researchers (Devito, 2003; Maloney, 2004; Adler and Rodman, 2007; Wood, 2006; Thitthongkam and Walsh, 2009) when they stated that language capability is really crucial to the tourism industry. Students who work for the model tour company have to be able to communicate by using foreign languages. There is a main problem alongside with the language competences in organising the model tour company. It is very normal that the people occasionally use English or other foreign languages to communicate. They use mainly their native language to communicate with others. As a result, most of the students are only familiar with using native language for communication. Unfortunately, they have very few chances to use foreign languages, especially English, Chinese, Japanese, and French. Hence, the students who involved the model tour company faced this problem unavoidably. They are not fluent in foreign languages when contacted with international tourists during the tour.

 

Moreover, the model tour company which is a taught course to students in the university, it offered a great opportunity for students to discover and practice in the real situations. It helps them to figure out how to run the tour company. Even though there were copious problems occurred, students learned how to execute from those dilemmas. Lecturer played roles as a consultant, a facilitator, an advisor, and an evaluator. Experiencing in managing the model tour company made students work hard as if they were actual tourism staff. They also learned how to get along well with others in functioning. Students can apply the skill for their future profession when they work for the tourism industry. Regardless, the language roles and the model tour company certainly enhance competitiveness in the Thai tourism industry.

 

Based on the research findings, it is recommended that managing the model tour company, tourism educational institutions need to provide enough foreign language skills training for students. Further research should concentrate on the diversity of the model tour company in Thai universities comparing to educational institutions in western countries. Another concentration should be about roles of language in tourism competitiveness.

 
 

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