Russian-speaking tour guide’s language mastery: mastering foreign language for quality service assurance

A professional tour guide is regarded as a frontliner of the tourism and the ambassador of his/her country. Therefore, the performance of a tour guide is very important as a quality assurance of services in order to fulfil the tourists’ satisfaction. This study aims at investigating the mastery level of the tour guide’s Russian language related to the quality assurance of uniform services in meeting the tourists’ satisfaction. By applying a descriptive qualitative research, the data was collected through observation, interview, and document review. The theory used to undertake this study is communicative competence (grammar, sociolinguistics, and communicative strategic). The study reveals that the mastery of Russian language for a professional tour guide has been proven to meet the expectation of Russian tourists to get the excellent service as a quality assurance to provide the tourist satisfaction so that products prepared by travel agents and purchased by the tourist are carried out properly.


Introduction
Tourism in Indonesia has now increased from year to year in line with the government's commitment, especially the Ministry of Tourism to promote Indonesia, which consists of thousands of islands so that there are several well-known and newly introduced tourist destinations. Some of these tourist destinations are spread from the western to eastern parts of Indonesia, such as North Sumatra with Lake Toba attractions and Samosir island, Bangka Belitung (Babel) as new tourist destinations, Kalimantan Island with its mascot of orangutans and Dayak culture, Bali and beyond (Bali) such as NTB, NTT, Maluku, and Papua, which are incorporated in Corridor VI for Eastern Indonesia. Especially for Bali, which already has a name as the best tourist destination in the world, it is expected to help promote other tourist destinations, as this goal of tourism development was exhibited at the Bali and Beyond Travel Fair (BBTF) 26-29 June 2018. The annual event took place in Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center (BNDCC) cooperated with other tourist destinations in Indonesia including 10 newly-developed destinations.
Bali is famous as a tourist destination because it has a variety of tourism potentials such as natural beauty, cultural uniqueness, and the social life of the majority of the Hindu community. Balinese culture as an asset or attraction has made Bali a lot of foreign tourists visiting from Asia, Australia, Africa, and Europe. Today lots of tourists from Eastern Europe, especially Russia, also come to Bali. Russia's new tourist visit is relatively new after the collapse of the Communists from the Soviet Union in the era of the 90s (Fadillah, 2006: 1) which made the Russian country dubbed the Red Bear Country open to its citizens to travel abroad and this proves the existence of a global cultural flow, especially the ethno-scape proposed by Appadurai. Compared with other tourists, especially from Western European countries, America and Japan, Russian tourists are classified as new tourists visiting Bali. Additionally, the arrival of Russian tourists to Bali is a breath of fresh air amidst the saturated market share of Western and Japanese tourists. The community enthusiastically studied Russian at foreign language course institutions so that they could handle Russian tourists at a travel agency that handles Russian tourists. Not only limited to guides who have experience learning Russian, young people who do not have a licensed guide also learn Russian. After they master the Russian language and take part in a training guide at a travel agency, they attend a tour guide training organized by the Provincial Tourism Office to obtain a tour guide identification card or license.
Mastery of Russian language by the tour guides is very influential on the assessment of Russian tourists as service users who make visits to a tourist destination and ultimately encourage maintaining the company's image and even increase the number of tourist visits. One important factor in maintaining the company's reputation is the quality of service. Service is an action taken to fulfil the customer desire for a product or service they need, this action is done to give satisfaction to customers to fulfil what they need. The purpose of each service company is to provide what customers or consumers consider quality feelings. 'Feelings' means that the quality expected is already in the minds of consumers (Prihatno, 2010). Businesses in the service sector that want to be able to compete based on service quality must feel they have better service than their competitors. Business profits are usually due to the relatively better quality of the product or service. The satisfaction of Russian tourists is determined by some of the quality of services received by these tourists. The quality of service received by Russian tourists can be provided by airlines that transport tourists, travel agents through office staff, guides, tourist transport and drivers, hotels where tourists stay, restaurants, objects and tourist attractions when tourists do tour activities. In this case, the tour guide's delivering speech in the Russian language is a very important factor to provide the satisfaction of Russian tourists during a visit in Bali as a tourist destination chosen for vacation. The tour-Guided services through adequate Russian language communication will give a positive impression for Russian tourists to further promote Bali as a world tourism destination.
Based on the description of the background above, in order to be able to examine more deeply the mastery of Russian language from the point of view of service quality and tourist satisfaction, a study was conducted to investigate the improvement of the tour guide Russian language mastery as a quality service that gives satisfaction to tourists. This study is seeking to answer the research question of how mastering the Russian language by the tour guide could be a quality-service assurance? Therefore, the purpose of the study is to find out the mastery of the Russian language by the tour guide as a quality-service assurance.
1.1 Literature Review 1.1.1 Mastery of Language Mastery of language is the ability of a person to use the language in communication. Communicating here is not only able to speak on the basis of grammatical principles but also to consider the social and cultural aspects and the communication strategy itself. According to Chomsky (Bagarić and Djigunović 2007: 95) the concept of communication in language as competence (knowledge of language between speaker and listener) and performance (the use of language in actual situations). Therefore, communicative competence focuses on three main aspects, namely grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence (Celce-Murcia, 2007). The communicative competency model proposed by Canale andSwain (1980,1981) in Bagarić and Djigunović (2007: 97) contains three main components, namely grammatical competence, sociolinguistics, and strategy. According to Canale and Swain, grammatical competence is related to the mastery of language (verbal or nonverbal) including vocabulary knowledge that allows the speaker to use the knowledge and skills needed to understand and convey the literal meaning of utterances.

Russian Language
According to Fadillah (2006), Russian language is one of the official languages of the United Nations and is widely used by around 290 million people in the world. Furthermore, it is said that the Russian language belongs to the Slavic language family and has many grammatical or semantic similarities with the languages of Ukraine, Byelorussia, Poland, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian and Yugoslavia. The letters used in Russian are called Cyrillic letters introduced by a priest, St. Cyril in the 9th century. Based on sources from the Indonesian Wikipedia, it is stated that in the Slavic language family, Russian is closest to the Eastern Slavic languages, namely Belarus and Ukrainian. Like these last two languages, using the Cyrillic alphabet, Russian is used as an intermediate language (lingua franca) in the republics of the former Soviet Union. Based on the Language Protection Institute in Monterey, Russian is classified as a level III language, which is a language that is quite difficult to learn by native English-speaking people and takes 780 hours to speak Russian fluently.

Tour Guide
Guides based on the Decree of the Minister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications No. KM.82 / PW.102 / MPPT-88 (Bali Provincial Tourism Office, 2006) is a person who is in charge of providing guidance, lighting, and guidance on tourism objects, as well as helping everything that is needed by tourists. Every guide who handles tourists must have a license and be a member of the Indonesian tour guide group (HPI). handling travelers Atmaja (2008: 2) states that there are three main things that must be possessed by a professional guide, namely (1) skill, (2) knowledge, and (3) ethics. A tour guide should be mastering the three skills in a balanced way as they are required in the job-career implementation as a professional tour guide. As a matter of fact, among the three skills complement each other. Tourists who work in travel agents can form a commissariat as a liaison medium for the interests of tour guides in a smaller unit (travel agent) with a larger group under the Indonesian tour guide association (HPI). In a conclusion, what is meant by guides in this study are Indonesian citizens who work as Russian-speaking tour guides at a number of travel agents handling Russian tourists and having a license as they are being registered as HPI members.

Service Assurance
The definition of service quality is inseparable from efforts to meet customer needs and desires and the accuracy of its delivery to offset customer expectations. According to Wyckof (Tjiptono, 2008), service quality is the expected level of excellence and control over the level of excellence to meet customer desires. In the tourism industry, service quality is aimed at providing quality services. Quality of Service is any action or activity that can be offered by a party to another party. Kotler (2002: 486) defines services as any actions or activities offered by one party to another, basically are intangible and do not result in any ownership. Dimensions in service quality in accordance with the theory proposed by Zeithaml, Parasuraman, Berry (Selang, 2013) include tangible, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy affect consumer satisfaction. With the good quality of service within a company, it will create satisfaction for its customers. After consumers feel satisfied with the product or service they receive, consumers will be repeated guests and give recommendations to others to return for using the same service.

Tourist Satisfaction
Some notions of customer satisfaction such as those given by Fandi (2008) customer satisfaction is the customer's response to the evaluation of the perceived nonconformity between previous expectations (or other performance norms) and the actual performance of the product felt after use. Kotler (2001), customer satisfaction is the level of one's feelings after comparing the performance (or outcome) he feels compared to his expectations. According to Sumarwan (2014), customer satisfaction is a feeling of pleasure or disappointment after comparing the perception/impression of performance/expectations. If performance meets expectations, customers are satisfied. If it exceeds expectations, customers are very satisfied. According to Byrne, et al (2007), the factors that influence customer satisfaction and expectations consist of: "Needs and desires" relating to things that customers feel when they are trying to make transactions with service results. Every customer-oriented company needs to provide the widest possible opportunity for its customers to convey their suggestions, opinions, and complaints. Media that can be used include suggestion and complaint boxes, questionnaire entries, providing special telephone lines, sending via email and social media.
Research on tourist satisfaction on the quality of services to Tourist Information Counters (TICs) on Jalan Padma Utara, Legian, Kuta is carried out by Suwintari (2012). Suwintari argued that tourist satisfaction is a comparison between product performance produced by the performance perceived by tourists. Suwintari emphasized the comparison of a performance, namely if it is below expectations, tourists are not satisfied, if the performance meets expectations, tourists are satisfied, and if the performance exceeds expectations, tourists are very satisfied or happy. Similar research was also carried out by Kalebos (2016) by examining the factors that influence the satisfaction of tourists visiting island tourism areas. Parasuraman, et al. (1994); Hightower (2010) (Kalebos, 2016: 6), Prasetio (2012), Parasuraman et al. (1985) service quality includes several important factors, namely reliability, responsiveness, competence, access, communication, credibility, courtesy, security, understanding customers (understanding / knowing the customer), and tangibles. This research is very different. The focus of this study is to improve the mastery of Russian language guides as a quality service for the satisfaction of Russian tourists in Bali. Language as an important aspect to determine the quality of service to tourists greatly determines tourist satisfaction. Specifically, the focus of this research is the Russian language which is still relatively new and still rare compared to other foreign languages, such as English and Japanese, amidst increasing Russian tourist visits. In addition, the Russian language has a high level of difficulty to master.

Method
Research on improving Russian language mastery and tourist satisfaction are qualitative descriptive. The data used are primary and secondary data. Primary data is data that is directly obtained based on observations when guides explain some of the tourist objects in Bali, and direct interviews with 25 Russian-language guides as respondents of this study determined based on snowball sampling techniques. Snowball sampling technique is one of the non-probability sampling techniques in qualitative research by looking for key informants in field research that helps researchers find other key informants or open access to respondents to be studied (Bungin, 2001). In making observations, in addition to observing guides in explaining tourism objects, it is also possible to observe competent involvement techniques (Muhammad: 207), namely researchers involved in the discussion and observing the use of the language of the speakers. Whereas secondary data is data obtained from the search results of questionnaires in several travel agents that handle Russian tourists in Bali. This questionnaire is usually filled by Russian tourists before leaving for their country.
Subsequent data were analyzed with qualitative descriptive methods based on an inductive methodological paradigm. That is a paradigm that departs from something specific to something common (Mahsun, 2005: 256-257). With descriptive analysis method, the data that has been collected in the form of an increase in mastery of Russian language and tourist satisfaction is described in full so that finally obtained a conclusion regarding the increase in mastery of Russian language by guides and factors that influence the increase in mastery of Russian language including service dimension factors against Russian tourists in determining tourist satisfaction. The results of the study are presented with formal and informal methods. According to Sudaryanto (1993: 145) informal presentation methods are presenting the results of analysis with descriptions or ordinary words, while the formal presentation method is the formulation with signs and symbols According to Muhammad (2011) symbols or signs are used for present or formulate the results of the analysis so that the meaning of the method, the relationship between the methods, and the characteristics of the method can be known and understood.

Results and Discussion
Russian tourists who visit Bali as an international tourist destination have hopes of experience about natural charm and especially cultural uniqueness. As a customer or customer service tourism industry in general, the hope of Russian tourists is a motivation to satisfy the needs of tourists themselves. In this case, Russian tourists who come to Bali have traveled very far so that they have high expectations of quality of service in order to get satisfaction. The expectations of tourists can be illustrated as the motivation to purchase a product and service related to basic human needs and desires, as stated by Maslow in his motivation theory. This section will describe the results of the study obtained through direct observation and interviews of guides in handling Russian tourists in Bali and the results of document studies. The results of the study were described in a descriptive qualitative manner by describing the mastery of Russian language by tour guides which increased along with the dynamics of the influx coming of Russian tourists over the years and the factors influencing the increase in Russian language instruction by guides in relation to the dimensions of service for tourist satisfaction.

Russian Language Mastery of the Tour Guide
The satisfaction of Russian tourists towards the services provided by guides is directly related to the performance of guides themselves, especially from aspects of language acquisition. If the level of mastery of Russian is low, then the performance of guides is below expectations and tourists are not satisfied. Conversely, if the level of mastery of Russian is high, then the performance of guide guides meets expectations and satisfied tourists. The arrival of Russian tourists to Bali about 20 years ago with the dynamics of his visit on the island of the gods requires guides with Russian language specialization to handle them. The role of the Russian-language tour guide is very important whose job is to provide information services to tourists where their Russian language mastery has experienced dynamic development is traced from the beginning of its arrival to the present.
At the beginning of the arrival of Russian tourists in Bali mastery of their Russian language is so minimal, but tourists still understand it and try to do a communication in the context of survival where guides try hard to make tourists understand the information conveyed, on the other hand, tourists also try to capture the idea delivered with language media that is still minimal. Apart from the perfection of a language communication tourists have been well served. This is evidenced by the increasing enthusiasm of tourists to buy optional tours and visit various attractions with guides.
Complaints in the form of language acquisition delivered by Russian tourists at the beginning of his arrival in Bali were the lack of mastery of Russian language guides. This is considered normal considering that the Russian language is a foreign language that is classified as very new among tourism actors in Bali. But over time these assumptions are refuted because guides have learned a lot to improve their Russian language skills through intensive practice with tourists and the help of digital technology to access material in Russian and with Google translate is easy in vocabulary mastery. Even using social media they can interact with tourists or fellow guides with Russian-language text literacy. This is a very positive development in mastering the Russian language.
The satisfaction of Russian tourists towards the services provided by guides is directly related to the performance of guides themselves, especially from aspects of language acquisition. If the level of mastery of Russian is low, then the performance of guides is below expectations and tourists are not satisfied. Conversely, if the level of mastery of Russian is high, then the performance of guide guides meets expectations and satisfied tourists. The arrival of Russian tourists to Bali about 20 years ago with the dynamics of his visit on the island of the gods requires guides with Russian language specialization to handle them. The role of the Russian-language tour guide is very important whose job is to provide information services to tourists where their Russian language mastery has experienced dynamic development is traced from the beginning of its arrival to the present. At the beginning of the arrival of Russian tourists in Bali mastery of their Russian language is so minimal, but tourists still understand it and try to do a communication in the context of survival where guides try hard to make tourists understand the information conveyed, on the other hand, tourists also try to capture the idea delivered with language media that is still minimal. Apart from the perfection of a language communication tourists have been well served. This is evidenced by the increasing enthusiasm of tourists to buy optional tours and visit various attractions with guides. Complaints in the form of language acquisition delivered by Russian tourists at the beginning of his arrival in Bali were the lack of mastery of Russian language guides. This is considered normal considering that the Russian language is a foreign language that is classified as very new among tourism actors in Bali. But over time these assumptions are refuted because guides have learned a lot to improve their Russian language skills through intensive practice with tourists and the help of digital technology to access material in Russian and with Google translate is easy in vocabulary mastery. Even using social media, they can interact with tourists or fellow guides with Russian-language text literacy. This is a very positive development in mastering the Russian language.
To determine the level of satisfaction of Russian tourists on the quality of tour guides through mastering the Russian language in Bali, it was analyzed descriptively from the results of field observations and direct interviews with guides who handled Russian tourists as primary data sources. The results of this observation and interview were also supported by the results of the document study as secondary data in the form of questionnaire forms completed by Russian tourists before they departed to their countries. Every travel agency that handles Russian tourists in Bali must provide the questionnaire form and give it to guides who pick up Russian tourists for transfer-out.
Based on the results of observations and direct interviews with 25 Russian-language guides as respondents to this study, it was found that the guide had mastered Russian at the intermediate level (advanced) to advanced level. This was demonstrated through the results of their performance when explaining information on tourist attractions such as the Batuan temple, Goa Gajah, Tirta Empul, Besakih, Tanah Lot, Taman Ayun, Uluwatu, and natural attractions such as the Batur geo-park site, frequent terrace cultural heritage Jatiluwih, Ubud monkey forest, Bedugul botanical garden. The tourist attraction has been worldwide and requires an explanation of the philosophical, religious, historical aspects that relate to Balinese culture and cannot be separated from the beliefs held by the Balinese people, namely Hinduism.
Explanations provided by guides are carried out in Russian fluently and complete information. They explained the various functions and grammar of the Russian language. This is the focus of this research considering that the Russian language has 6 types of case forms, namely nominative (N), accusative (A), dative (D), genitive (G), instrumental (I), and prepositional (P). The use of the case form in a sentence context will show how varied Russian-language guides are in terms of accuracy. Therefore, the expression of sentences that are expressed will experience a change in the context that is subject to a case from both in the noun and adjective. The imposition of this case will be more complex because the Russian language noun is classified in masculine, feminine, neutral form and each gender noun is divided into singular and plural. In addition, the verb undergoes conjugation depends on the subject and changes occur in accordance with the form of the times and aspects of both the perfective and imperative aspects. Table 1 below shows changes in noun forms in 6 types of case forms.   Improved mastery of the Russian language by guides is also found in written literacy when guides interact using social media such as a WhatsApp (WA) application. The progress of the level of mastery of Russian language by guides significantly influences the quality of service to satisfy Russian tourists as shown in a questionnaire where Russian tourists on average give a range of scores 1 -2 about mastering Russian language guides which means excellent for score 1 and good for score 2. The score given by Russian tourists is certainly very beneficial for all parties not only to tour guides but also the travel agents that employ guides so that the sustainability of visiting Russian tourists is guaranteed.

Russian-Speaking Tour Guide and Service Dimension
To answer the second problem about factors that influence the level of mastery of the Russian language guides can be stated that besides the Russian tourists who have the motivation to get satisfaction from the quality of services provided by guides on the other hand tour guides have the motivation to improve their Russian language mastery to provide quality service which is prime to tourists and makes them still exist from the tight competition in dealing with Russian tourists. The competition does not only occur among guides themselves as healthy competition, but also from the large number of foreign representatives from Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan who take part in handling Russian tourists in Bali. This competition with foreign representatives becomes unhealthy, besides the foreign representatives as native speakers are also exhaled by the issue that mastering Russian language guides is minimal. This competition is what triggers guides to strive to improve the mastery of the Russian language in order to dismiss these unfounded issues otherwise they only become spectators in their own country. Increased mastery of Russian language guide as a quality of service that gives satisfaction to Russian tourists is inseparable from the dimensions of service to tourists who have their respective influences in determining tourist satisfaction on service quality, namely tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Tangibility factor is shown through the physical appearance of guides who characterize professional people and imbued with the local cultural work ethic, namely guides wearing traditional Balinese clothing. This appearance is certainly a positive impression for Russian tourists who have come to Bali to gain experience with the local culture. Reliability factors are determined by providing information according to needs, timely service, and avoiding errors when providing services. Communication errors will not occur along with the increasing level of mastery of Russian language guides. The responsiveness factor is done by appreciating tourists, professionals in providing services, helping tourists with deftness, and attitude when serving. Guides should be more appreciative of tourists in providing services especially for Russian tourists who have different characteristics from tourists from Australia, America, and other Western European countries.
The assurance factor can be done through the use of clear and easy-tounderstand Russian language, knowledge of guides about extensive tourism products and culture, security of Russian tourists during the handling of guides, as well as being honest and clean in serving. Communication is important in handling Russian tourists because the use of Russian language is good and right coupled with knowledge about tourism products and culture can increase tourist confidence in guides, especially in the purchase of optional tours and can provide accurate and accurate information to tourists. In terms of empathy factors, namely respecting Russian tourists with the use of language that is polite, friendly, and always smiling in serving, and paying attention to tourists' requests.

Conclusion
Mastery of Russian language tour guides has experienced a very significant increase along with the increasingly intensive interaction between guides and Russian tourists in addition to guided guides with the development of information and communication technology. In addition, competition with foreign representatives who also handle Russian tourists in Bali has spurred guides to improve Russian language mastery. Increased mastery of the Russian language by guides has a positive impact on the quality of service that gives satisfaction to Russian tourists. The service quality includes five service dimension factors, namely tangibility such as the physical appearance of guides who impress Russian tourists, reliability with the communicative competence of guides can improve services to tourists, responsiveness by understanding the characteristics of Russian tourists can satisfy tourists, assurance with knowledge of tourism products and culture can increase Russian tourists' trust in guides, and empathy with the use of polite language, friendly attitude, and respect for tourists provides a special satisfaction for Russian tourists.
It can be suggested to guides to keep maintaining the mastery of the Russian language that has been achieved so far and even improved to provide excellent service quality to the satisfaction of Russian tourists and cling to honesty as the most important aspect of the service dimension, thus building a positive image among guides as the spearhead (front-line) tourism and ambassadors of countries and nations in the tourism sector.