Intercultural prospects in the hospitality industry

Fedyaev A

RUDN (MOSCOW, RUSSIA)

INTERCULTURAL PROSPECTS IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

1. INTRODUCTION

Hospitality organizations that are increasingly operating worldwide create real challenges for their employees and managers to interact and effectively work with people from different cultural surroundings. Many problems may relate to cross-cultural communication between managers and employees and between employees and hotel guests from different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, the issue of intercultural communication has recently had an increasing reach in the hospitality industry. Cultural awareness, sensitivity, and understanding of cultural differences should be considered critical for business success.

1. RESEARCH GOAL

The following questions need answers to consider intercultural perspectives: What kind of challenges does the hospitality industry face given the multicultural diversity of its markets? What kind of managers' skills and abilities are strongly required today to manage effectively multicultural hospitality workforce? The research aims to show that the cultural diversity of hotel employees and guests may cause unique challenges of cross-cultural service encounters, which may provide an opportunity for service differentiation.

1. ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM

The term ''culture'' has a great variety of meanings used in different contexts. Generally, there are customs, a lifestyle, and beliefs shared and set by people of a given society- all these factors the culture cause. Culture provides an individual with an awareness of his roots, values, and history, giving a sense that one belongs to a local community. It controls a person's behavior. Culture is formed by religion and political background, initiative, and influential leaders, storytellers, and intelligent people.

Nevertheless, negative cases may occur while people of their cultural principles misunderstand each other due to language barriers and cultural views of the surrounding world. Therefore, it is essential to speak a foreign language and be aware of cultural differences.

In the hospitality industry, cross- and intercultural interaction has become very significant either in hotel guests' relations or hotel employees’ ones. There are some reasons why hotel specialists have to be entirely attentive to such communication and the opportunities to manage them.

Firstly, one of the most foundational traveling issues is experiencing cultural varieties. For many decades, tourism has been challenging diversification, becoming one of the fastest-growing economic spheres in the entire world. For example, before approximately 30 million foreign tourists visited the coronavirus boom Russia, most of them stayed in a city hotel, guest apartments, 20 percent lived in resort areas such as Sochi, Crimea. These visitors were of different cross-cultural backgrounds. Interpersonal relations between nationalities are likely to continue.

Secondly, well-managed human resources are the key to competitive advantage. In the hospitality industry, which is labor-intensive, human resource management is more complex and strongly depends on effective communication. Moreover, analyzing the cultural differences may lead to many interactive misunderstandings and fail practices in managing and considering culturally diverse employees, which may cause the employees’ job frustration and dissatisfaction. That is why, mentioned problem product and increase service quality failure.

Finally, globalization has led the whole hospitality workforce to cultural diversity. One of the worldwide hotel chains, the Hilton, claims that ''more than 300000 owned, managed, franchised and corporate team members across more than 93 countries, we are by nature diverse''. Meanwhile, the Accor hotel group has 180000 workers in more than 92 countries and provides almost 100 professions across five continents. As a fact, many cultures ought to work together and cooperate during daily duties. Many specialists underline that serving guests, solving their problems, and contacting employees are usually required to communicate with staff from other areas. Thus, if cooperation fails due to cultural varieties, contract employees may not function effectively.