Challenges facing tour guide profession and their impacts on the egyptian guides performance

الملخص EN

Tour guides have important roles in the tourism industry, but they face many problems and challenges that may adversely affect their performance and this might affect negatively the tourists' satisfaction and experience.

Therefore, it is important to focus on these challenges and difficulties and try to find actual and realistic solutions to them.

The current research aims at exploring the different challenges and problems facing tour guides in Egypt.

Within this context, two online questionnaire forms were distributed to Egyptian tour guides and experts in the tourism and guidance field (May 2020 to July 2020).

It was concluded that different challenges face tour guides in Egypt such as terrorism, crises, and disasters, which greatly impact the tour guide profession; moreover, according to Law No.

121 of the year 1983 concerning tour guides, they are not allowed to combine more than one job as well as some persons practice the tour guide profession without a license, which negatively affects the Egyptian tour guide's image.

The research reached a set of recommendations to improve the working conditions of tour guides in Egypt.