Humour and scams in guided tours; synthesising issues from embodied international experiences

Electronic guiding tools challenge the future of tourist guides in some settings. In an attempt to generate new insights into the human qualities of interpersonal interaction in "live" guided tours, ten cases were systematically drawn from a larger listing of documented, personally familiar tours featuring humour and tourist scams. Using a repertory grid style sorting task and the researchers' judgements, it was suggested that humour and incidents involving tourist scams were perceived by well defined constructs. For humour, specific humour and generic overall amusing qualities of the tour were important; for scams the dominant construct was the scam's seriousness