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It is understood that the personality traits and intelligence levels of the tourist guides directly or indirectly affect their ability to solve the problems they encounter on tours. This study aims to test whether emotional intelligence has an intermediary effect on the problem-solving skills of professional tourist guides with perfectionist personality traits.

Field research was conducted within the study to analyze suggestions on the interaction of variables on an empirical basis, and data were collected using interview, document review and survey technique. Thus, the mixed-methods approach was used in the study. Within the scope of this study in which 410 professional tourist guides were surveyed, a substantial part of the research data was obtained through the application of the survey technique. Besides, interviews were carried out with 12 professional tourist guides. The clues obtained by the qualitative study were transformed into hypotheses within the scope of the quantitative study, and the intermediary effect was tested.

A relationship between the main themes, sub-themes and codes was determined within the framework of the qualitative method. As a result of the mediation test, it has been revealed that emotional intelligence has an intermediary role in the relationship between perfectionism and problem-solving skills. According to the results of bootstrapping, the indirect effect of emotional intelligence on perfectionism and problem-solving skills was found out to be significant.

The study acknowledged that positive perfectionism, high emotional intelligence and problem-solving skills contributed to the professional tourist guides being willing to provide better service. In tune with the assumption that the more the quality of the tours carried out through agencies increases, the more satisfied tourists are; the study implicated that it would be advisable for agencies to prioritize the trainings provided for their tour guides to enhance their positive perfectionist, emotionally intelligent personalities and problem-solving skills. Given that professional tourist guides may create a positive country image with the quality service they provide, the significance of such trainings stretch beyond the benefits of such organizations.

Relevant variables were analyzed with a mixed method and applied on professional tourist guides.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between characteristics of change (frequency of change [FC], impact of change [IC], planning involved in change [PC]) and job insecurity (JIS), as well as the moderating role of employability (EMP) within these relationships.

Data were obtained from a sample of 361 permanent employees working at four- and five-star hotels. The hypothesized relationships were tested via structural equation modeling.

The findings revealed that employees’ perceptions of JIS are affected positively by FC and IC and negatively by PC. Additionally, this study confirmed that the perception of EMP moderates the relationships between the characteristics of organizational change (FC, IC, PC) and JIS.

No causal inference can be made with regard to the relationships in this study by virtue of the cross-sectional data used in the study. Hence, further studies with longitudinal design and wider samples covering different regions and/or tourism destinations need to be carried out to validate the results of this study and to further clarify the direction of the relationships presented here.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study presents the first empirical evidence on the moderating role of EMP in accounting for the JIS resulting from FC, IC and PC, the characteristics of organizational change. Also, the significance of this study lies in the fact that its subject has not been addressed before from the perspective of the hospitality industry.