Değirmenci, Yavuz2024-10-042024-10-0420212630-6336https://search.trdizin.gov.tr/tr/yayin/detay/418986http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12403/4352In today's world, tourism is one of the areas that both countries and individuals are interested in.While tourism offers opportunities to countries in various aspects primarily in economic terms, it has always been an area of interest for individuals as well. The most important actors in this area are undoubtedly individuals, in other terms, tourists. On the other hand, individuals' perception of tourists, who are in interaction with nature, the environment and local elements, is considered to be of importance and it isthought that this perception may affect tourism activities in various terms. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the tourist perceptions of teacher candidates who took tourism classes during their undergraduate education. The study was carried out with 142 teacher candidates studying in the Department of Social Studies Teaching inthe Faculty of Education at a state university in Turkey in the spring semester of the 2019-2020 academic year. The qualitative phenomenology design was used in the study. The views and thoughts of the study group regarding the perception of tourists werecollected through an interview form consisting of a single sentence. The content analysis technique was used in the analysis of data. According to the findings obtained from the study, the participants produced a total of 75 valid metaphors related to theconcept of tourist. These metaphors were categorized based on their common properties (n=5). As a result of the study, it was determined that the highest frequency of metaphors related to the concept of tourist was produced under the category \"tourist as an economic element\" (n=43). Additionally, it was observed that the participants mostly associated tourists with metaphors such as money, bird, foreign currency, curious child and guest.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessArticle254398107418986