Opinions of Professional Tourist Guides in Van Regarding Vocational Education Program named “History, Culture, Art and Archeology of Van

Abstract

This research aims to evaluate the opinions of 13 tourist guides residing in Van about the training program organized within the scope of obtaining comprehensive information about Van's history, culture, art, and archeology and raising their awareness. A qualitative research method was used in the research and content analysis was made. According to the findings, the opinions of tourist guides on vocational education; It is explained under the themes of "contributions offered by the program", "aspects that need improvement", "hard aspects of the program", "easy aspects of the program" and "positive aspects of the program". The most important contribution of this training program to tourist guides is the reinforcement of existing knowledge. Other important contributions are that the training is offered by academicians who are experts in the field and that the tourist guides have noticed their deficiencies in terms of knowledge. Another important finding is that the content of the training was deemed sufficient and appropriate by the tourist guides. The intensive arrangement of the training program in terms of duration was criticized by some tourist guides and it was stated that improvements should be made in terms of duration. The research is expected to guide the development of education programs that will be repeated in the future.