Study On The Present Conditions Of Professional Ethics Of Tourist Guides And Its Improvement

With the reform and opening-up policy and the rapid-development of tourist industry,guides as service professional are growing significantly. Guides play essential roles in almostevery tourist activities since they are operators of six tourism service sectors. Both sufficientprofessional knowledge and good professional ethics are required to be an excellent tour guide.However, it is not uncommon to hear the news that tourists are deceived by their guides.Therefore, construction of guides’ professional ethics attracts public attentions. For instance, thedecreasing quality of service of particular guides and lack of credibility are two main reasons ofcomplaints within the tourist industry. Two reasons contribute to this problem. One concernspursuit of interest as the nature of human beings. Another reason focuses on the market disorderand insufficient supervision. Hence, it is not enough only rely on the administrative supervisionand relevant regulation to solve this problem. The guidance of ethics education is also requiredin order to make every guide realize the important role the professional ethics play in his/herself-advancement and further enable he/she to balance the conflict between ethics and interests.At the same time, tourist businesses should pay attention to the guides’ needs, safeguard guides’legitimate rights, and create fair environment in which guides have good prospect. Goals of theimprovement of professional ethics of guides, protecting economic efficiency of touristbusinesses and the image maintenance of the domestic tourist industry will be achieved onlywhen preceding solutions are applied. Guided by the Marxism theory and by applying themethod of historical dialectical materialism, main problems of professional ethics will beanalyzed via study on the professional ethics conditions of tour guides. Causes contributing tothese problems will be explored and relevant suggestions will be provided afterwards. Thispaper serves to provide lessons both on improvement of guides’ professional ethics andprofessional ethics construction both of which contribute to the healthy development of theindustry.