Emotional Education in Tourism Tour Guide Training: Identifying and Prioritizing Core Competencies

Emotional education is increasingly recognized as an important dimension of holistic education, yet its systematic integration into vocational education–particularly in service professions involving intensive emotional interaction–remains limited. This study identifies and prioritizes core emotional competencies for tourism tour guide training. A multi-phase mixed-methods design was employed, involving 25 experts including educational specialists, tourism lecturers, and experienced tour guides. The findings identify five core emotional competency domains: self-awareness, emotion regulation, social awareness and empathy, emotional communication and relationship skills, and emotional resilience and adaptability. Expert evaluations demonstrate strong consensus on the relevance of these domains, supporting the content validity of the proposed framework. Priority analysis indicates that emotion regulation and social awareness and empathy are the most critical competencies for tour guide training, while the remaining domains serve foundational roles. The study contributes to emotional education research and provides guidance for designing competency-based emotional education in tourism training programs.