Intercultural Communication Within The Tourism Industry

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Tourism - Miscellaneous, 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

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.

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.

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.

This volume presents the results of Bulgarian and international tourism research, and brings together selected papers from the international conference “Tourism and Innovations” held in Varna, Bulgaria, in 2018. It contains theoretical and empirical approaches towards various aspects of tourism concerning both innovations in tourism development and in foreign languages education. As a whole, the book presents innovative solutions and processes in tourism, including management and staff training, provoked by today’s opportunities and challenges for future tourism development. The first part is dedicated to issues in tourism innovation, ranging from those provoked from the changing global environment and tourism demand, through to social innovations concerning tourism products and human resources management. The second section of the book deals with traditions and innovations in foreign language education oriented to managers, operational staff and decision-makers in tourism.

This book asks the question; why is it that tourism matters? It looks at how it is we do tourism and learn to be tourists when we are on holiday. Tourism is a dynamic way of being that may facilitate or hinder intercultural exchange. The ways in which we do tourism and the places in which we are tourists raise practical, material and emotional questions about tourist life. These questions are at the heart of this book. This book draws on both empirical work and a range of theoretical frameworks, arguing that tourism matters precisely because of the lessons it can teach us about living everyday life with others.

In recent years there has been a considerable interest in the cultural aspects of tourism such as the impacts of culture on tourism planning, development, management, and marketing. However, the focus has been on material forms of culture such as arts, music, or crafts. The impacts of national culture on tourist behavior and travel decision-making have not been paid much attention. Only in the last two years have cross-cultural issues begun to generate significant interest among academics. An examination of cultural characteristics and differences is extremely important to the tourism industry because today’s tourism environment is becoming increasingly international. Information on the nature of the cultural differences between international tourists and locals is not readily available in tourism literature. The concept of culture is very complex and includes such abstract concepts as satisfaction, attitude and loyalty. International Tourism brings these concepts to the undergraduate student in tourism, as well as students in the related fields of marketing, management, international business, and cross-cultural communication. Designed as a textbook, it isorganized and presented in an integrated and relevant way for the benefit of a worldwide audience.

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.