Cross-Cultural Sensitivities in Tourism: Potentials for Conflict and Understanding

Growth in the tourism industry internationally has imposed dealings between people from different cultures. As culture relates to norms, values and customs of people, it generates behavioral differentiation. This results in difference in expectations during the service encounters as customers, employees or suppliers. Tourism industry and other sectors of the service industry are faced with challenges of cross-cultural service encounters and continuously need to assess the service performance against the expectation of the customers, employees and suppliers from a diverse background. Such encounters might become easier to deal with if individuals are brought up in a home environment which encourages learning about others and providing service to others. This paper highlights the selected researches on cross-cultural sensitivities and discusses its managerial implications in the tourism industry from service perspective. The study concludes with stating some current issues and suggesting a way forward.