The Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the interpretation of cultural heritage sites by tourist guides in Malta

Abstract

The research study being conducted sets out to see if tourist guides during the Covid pandemic were able to use the time available to them during the lockdowns to change the way they were able to interpret the cultural heritage sites. The way in which it is set out to be done is through qualitative data and information which will be collected through semi structured interviews in which the interviewees will be asked questions related to the topic. The general findings found were that tourist guides did not change the way they interpret the cultural heritage sites very much. Apart from adapting to the situation they were in and the fact that the only thing which they might have added was when they would compare to what was happening now and what happened during the past two years and to what has already happened when quarantines were implemented or any other rules were also implemented in previous pandemics which happened. These findings suggest that no matter what happened the tourist guides in general they might change very little unless they are somehow forced or made to change the way they conduct the tours. The conclusions which were reached are that there is a lack of national literature on the topic of this study, that there is a need for a course for tourist guides to help them improving their interpretation and that tourist guides have encountered problems they cannot handle.