Cultural competence for tour leaders: Scale development and validation

Abstract

Tour leaders' cultural competence (CC) significantly influences their job performance and deserves more attention in the tourism research. However, no scales are currently available for evaluating CC. The goal of this study developed a scale has high validity and reliability for measuring tour leaders' CC. In-depth interviews with 20 tour leaders and content analysis to establish the initial items. An exploratory factor analysis was performed on 321 short-haul inclusive tour leaders to identify the 10 CC factors of tour leaders. Then, 284 long-haul inclusive tour leaders are collected for testing confirmatory factor analysis to identify the validity of the 36-item tour leaders’ cultural competence (TLCC) scale. The contributions of this study are the expansion of current understanding of CC and tour group dynamics. The scale serves as a useful tool for tour leaders to measure their CC and provide management implications and suggestions for travel agencies in arranging tour leaders.