Cross Cultural Communication For The Tourism And Hospitality Industry

This introduction to the business of tourism examines the cultural values of various ethnic groups and language and non-verbal communication. Food, beverage, service and accommodation customs are analyzed for varying cultural groups, including South Korean, Thai, German, Indian and American.

Cross-Cultural Aspects of Tourism and Hospitality is the first textbook to offer students, lecturers, researchers and practitioners a comprehensive guide to the influence of culture on service providers as well as on customers, affecting both the supply and the demand sides of the industry – organisational behaviour, and human resource management, and marketing and consumer behaviour. Given the need for delivering superior customer value, understanding different cultures from both demand and supply sides of tourism and hospitality and the impact of culture on these international industries is an essential part of all students’ and practitioners’ learning and development. This book takes a research-based approach critically reviewing seminal cultural theories and evaluating how these influence employee and customer behaviour in service encounters, marketing, and management processes and activities. Individual chapters cover a diverse range of cultural aspects including intercultural competence and intercultural sensitivity, uncertainty and risk avoidance, context in communication, power distance, indulgence and restraint, time orientation, gender, assertiveness, individualism and collectivism, performance orientation, and humane orientation. This book integrates international case studies throughout to show the application of theory, includes self-test questions, activities, further reading, and a set of PowerPoint slides to accompany each chapter. This will be essential reading for all students, lecturers, researchers and practitioners and future managers in the fields of Tourism and Hospitality.

The aim of this text is to provide the student with the context and skills for effective communication in the tourism and hospitality industry. The book is structured in five parts: the customer and the context for communication; cultures meeting in the workplace; communication and the customer; communication at work and in teams; and job seeking and career development.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Tourism, grade: 2,0, University of Cooperative Education Ravensburg, language: English, abstract: Tourism is the most superficial way of an intercultural encounter1 and one of the biggest industrial sectors in the world. “The WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council) estimates that over 230 million jobs in world are supported by the tourism industry, which equates to 8.3 per cent of total global employment, or one in every 12 jobs.”2 Furthermore, the latest statistics from 2008 show that tourism has not reached its peak yet. Over 80 countries earned more than € 642 billion through international tourism in 2008, while in 1990 it had only been € 207 billion.3 Another statistic representing and pointing up the booming tendency is the one showing the international tourist arrivals: while there had only been 25 million arrivals in 1950, the number constantly rose to 922 million in 2008 and by 2020 1.6 billion international tourist arrivals are expected.4 With so many tourists spending time abroad every year it is a logical consequence that different culture groups meet. From time to time, people may spend two weeks in Turkey, Dubai, Cancun or on Bali. This unfortunately might happen without the people even getting the local culture rudimentarily. But if they try to get to know the local culture, difficulties may occur. It is not only the language which is different and causes troubles and misunderstandings in communication; attitudes and the way people think vary greatly. Tourists often do not prepare themselves properly for their stays abroad; just reading a travel guide may not be sufficient at all. When going abroad people need to be aware of different behavioural rules and patterns. But not only tourists have to face this problem. In the tourism industry many people work abroad which not only leads to multicultural teams but also to misunderstandings going back to cultural differences. These groups, both tourists and employees, need to face their upcoming cultural communication challenges. Communication is an important and indispensible commodity; especially in the tourism industry conversations and interpersonal contact are trivial. Imagine a city tour or a checkout without a single word spoken. According to scientific investigations on interpersonal communications in the economy, managers spend 70% of their daily labour time with communicating.5 Due to the increasing internationalisation and globalisation of the tourism industry, the effects of intercultural relations on human resource management need to be taken into consideration.

This collection critically examines tourism as a site of intercultural communication, drawing on the analytical tools afforded by the discipline toward better understanding contemporary tourism discourses and the broader societal structures of power and ideologies in which they are situated. The volume interrogates culture and interculturality in tourism in detailed analyses of discursive details in tourism interactions and focuses on the notion of culture as a process or phenomenon engaged in or enacted on by individuals. Drawing on discourse analytic and ethnographic approaches, the book brings together perspectives from the lived experiences of residents, hosts and ethnographers to explore the extent to which linguistic and cultural differences are constructed, identities negotiated, and power relations maintained and perpetuated in tourism encounters. The volume draws on insights from those working across a range of geographic contexts and explores the interplay of these issues in English as well as other languages and language varieties used in tourism interactions. With its focus on critical approaches to understanding language and culture, this book will appeal to students and scholars in intercultural communication, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, and tourism studies.

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Communications - Intercultural Communication, grade: 1,3, Stralsund University of Applied Sciences, language: English, abstract: “McDonaldization” (GeorgRitzer), “Cocacolization” (Zdravko Mlinar) and “Mc-World” (Benjamin Barber) are just a few key words of a topic that has gained worldwide interest today. The Globalization is on the roll and seems to be unstoppable. [1] One by one, the world has become a ‘global village’ with multicultural societies, where it is unavoidable for us to get in greater contact with the rest of the world and other cultures. Our daily lives develop an increasingly international orientation. Globalization produced a demand for intercultural communication and awareness for both the tourism industry and many different commercial sectors. The travel and tourism industry has experienced a growing internationalization during the past decades. Especially here people are exposed to cultural different societies. In the tourism industry it is substantial to know cultures in its various forms and dimensions since it has a significant impact on tourism planning and development, management and marketing. Companies in the tourism industry have to understand the influence of national cultures on their consumers to be able to compete for market share successfully. Intercultural communication helps tourists to keep the quality of the interaction with different nationalities high and therefore contribute to their holiday experiences and perceptions of the visited destination. Many intercultural problems within the tourism industry arose during the past years and are becoming more and more threatening for both the host destinations and the tourist himself. This paper describes, analyzes and also discusses some of those problems in the tourism industry and try to find a possible solution for them in order to eventually smoothing the way from a global village to a global community.

The tourism industry is the largest service industry and the largest employment generator in the world. This was made possible by increasing globalization and disposable income, with the labor force playing an important role. Factors such as quality of services and business performance depend on a well-educated, well-trained, skilled, enthusiastic, and committed workforce. Contemporary Human Resources Management in the Tourism Industry is a pivotal reference source that provides research on the role of human resource departments in creating value for the workplace through innovation and efficient work processes. While highlighting topics such as organizational structure, gender equality, and employee motivation, this publication explores the development of organizational culture, as well as methods of translating business strategy into action through dramatically managing staff on all levels in the tourism industry. This book is ideally designed for human resources managers, business owners, business professionals, researchers, and academicians seeking current research on the organizational skills and strategies necessary in creating effective tourism businesses.

The tourism industry, of which the hospitality industry is the core element, is one of the largest and the fastest growing industries world-wide. According to World Tourism Organisation forecasts, the industry will continue to grow and employ more people in the twenty-first century. In parallel with the growth of the tourism and hospitality industry world-wide, consumer expectations and demands for quality are rising while consumer tastes are varying on the one hand, and competition among the firms, both nationally and internationally, is intensifying on the other. In this business environment of heightened consumer expectations, distinct market segments that demand unique products and services, and stiff competition, tourism and hospitality organisations are looking for ways to excel in service quality, customer satisfaction, competition and performance. This book takes the view that employees are one of the most, if not the most, important resources or assets for tourism and hospitality organisations in their endeavour to provide excellent service, meet and exceed consumer expectations, achieve competitive advantage and exceptional organisational performance. The purpose of this book is to emphasise the critical role of employees for tourism and hospitality organisations and to examine the ways and means of managing their attitudes and behaviours for the mutual benefit of both parties: tourism and hospitality organisations and their employees.