Participant Observations on Iranian Tourists Taking Part in Guided Excursion in Kusadasi, Turkey

Abstract

The current study aims to investigate the tourist behaviors (bargaining, interacting, shopping and etc.) of Iranians on guided excursions visiting Kusadasi. Firstly, the "twenty typical tourist behavior" scale, developed by Pizam and Sussmann (1995) was utilized, and then a participant observation form was created by adding 16 more items to the scale as a result of acquiring the opinions of some industry professionals. Thereafter, one of the researchers started observing Iranian tourists' behaviors by joining in guided excursions for Iranian tourists at different occasions in Kusadasi. During those five daily excursions, 174 Iranians were observed in total. In order not to disturb the tourist groups during the participant observations, the researcher, also being a professional tour guide, hung his tour guide ID around his neck during the excursions. With this approach, the researcher aimed to being perceived as an employee of the travel agent by the Iranian tourists. At this research, it was revealed that Iranians showed a low tendency to interact with other tourists, salespeople/ vendors and to buy local products. In addition to this, there were no Iranians leaving any tips unless the tour guides took their attention to the tip box. Besides this, they showed a low tendency to eat or drink during shopping oriented tours. Some delays were also detected during those daily excursions. Thus, it is possible to state that punctuality is not ranked among their priorities. On the other hand, it was revealed that Iranian tourists showed a high tendency to buy clothes in at the shopping malls. According to the findings, LCW, Zara and Koton were, respectively, the clothing brands most preferred by Iranians during the shopping tours. In addition, some of them bought souvenir photographs taken during the site visits. Although there were no Iranian visitors attempting to bargain at the shopping malls, some of them bargained with the vendors at Ephesus, and sales clerks at the leather shop.

Substitution effect of tourism destinations in Türkiye: Case study of Iranian tourists

“…Meanwhile, Istanbul has become the most important tourist destination for Iranians. The competition between Istanbul and other Turkish cities in attracting tourists (especially Iranian tourists) is growing (Duman & Kozak, 2009) So that this growth can be affected by various factors, some of which in the studies Asadi & Daryaei (2011), Duman (2016), Ozturk et al (2017), Çetin et al (2018), Acar & Tanrisevdi (2019) et cetera.…”