Department of Tourism Guidance aims to train and educate the prospective tourist guides who will be officially licensed by the ministry, and tourism experts and entrepreneurs in travel and tourism industry, who will efficiently introduce the tourism values, natural, historical and cultural assets of our country to domestic and foreign visitors. The department which was established in order to meet primarily the needs for employees who are highly mobile in the travel sector as a dynamic part of tourism and hospitality industry, is one of the distinguished and important departments of Yaşar University.
The primary focus of the Department of Tourism Guidance is to train the potential professional tourist guides who fluently speak different foreign languages for tourism industry under the confirmation of Culture and Tourism Ministry, furthermore to train and educate those students who will work various departments in the travel businesses, and prospective tour operators and the managers of travel industry.
The students supposed to be the graduates of the department, are the cultural and promotional volunteers of our country at the same time, and therefore the potential students who would like to be a member of the department are supposed to have lots of skills and talents, such as speaking at least one foreign language fluently, power of persuation, effective communication skills, good knowledge about the national and international agenda, liking domestic and international travel, a strong memory etc.
In this department where the instruction medium is English, one of the foreign language courses mainly Russian, German and French are taught as an obligatory second language, so that the graduates could be a tourist guide in a language relatively less known and spoken in comparison to English.
The students who are the member of the department have both long term or short term industrial internship, placement and study abroad opportunities in any European country with the Erasmus Exchange Programs. In addition to this, they will be able to participate the ACEEPT (Association of European Training Centers in Tourism) Intensive Week Programs, organized every year in a different member country by receiving an official participation certificate. The students of Department of Tourism have been participating for 5 years to this important event.
As with the prospective graduates of the department could find the jobs at travel agencies, tourism bureaus tour operators and transportation companies, they could also be the entrepreneurs in their specific fields. Tourist guides will be able to have jobs at the tourism bureaus or museums in the destinations, and they introduce the historical, cultural heritage and natural assets to the visitors. With the increase in the number of graduates who will serve the visitors from the countries like Russia, Germany which sent the large amount of visitors to our country for many years and the visitors from China which has an increasing share in international tourism in every year, so both the tourism sector will be met the need of qualifed employees and the graduates will have a large spectrum of employment opportunities.
In addition to above mentioned job opportunities, the students of the department can take the courses from the department of Tourism Management where most of the courses are joint with the department of Tourism Guidance and so they will also be able to graduate from this department obtaining the double degree.
The graduates can have the job opportunities in the following areas and ways,
- As Tour/Tourist Guides in the relatively less known and spoken languages.
- As the Representatives of Incoming Travel Agencies for Foreign Tour Operators.
- As the Representatives in the local and regional Travel Agencies.
- As the members of transportation sector, especially of Air Transportation.
- As an independent/individual tour operator.