Individual Essay: Cultural Diversity's Role in Tourism and Hospitality

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of cultural diversity within the tourism and hospitality sectors. It highlights the significance of cultural diversity, its influence on international business, and the challenges it presents, such as communication barriers. The essay emphasizes the importance of cultural diversity committees, training programs, and HR policies. It discusses the benefits, including improved workforce quality, cost-effectiveness, and enhanced employee performance and retention. The essay also explores how cultural diversity fosters a flexible working environment, improves customer service, and boosts innovation. It further examines the costs and consequences of neglecting cultural diversity, along with actions to improve its position within the industry, such as training, equal opportunities, and effective human resource management. The essay concludes by underscoring the global nature of the tourism and hospitality industry and the necessity of adapting to diverse cultures to meet customer needs and achieve organizational success. The essay includes references to support the arguments presented.

Running head: INDIVIDUAL ESSAY
Individual essay
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INDIVIDUAL ESSAY
Introduction
The diversity of culture is quite relevant to the tourism and hospitality management
sector, and it has influenced its business largely too. The cultural diversity is an important
concept in tourism and hospitality because of the global customer related industry and
management of international business. The cultural diversity though can bring several challenges
too like barriers to communication between employees. The most important technique is to
develop a cultural diversity committee such as a particular cultural event or language event
where the tourism and hospitality sector can promote its services delivered and make people
aware of the kinds of services delivered by the companies within the hospitality and tourism
sector (Bharwani and Butt 2012). The customs and rules are considered as the major cultural
components that the organisations want to identify and ensure that they adapt to the new culture
while expanding business globally and furthermore improve the efficiency of the business.
Cultural diversity in tourism and hospitality
Though cultural diversity is an important aspect, still it needs careful planning and proper
education and training programs are needed to make the workers of the hospitality and tourism
sector gain relevant skills and knowledge regarding that. The managers and employees must
understand the importance of cultural diversity within the tourism and hospitality industry and
bring a lot of benefits in the workforce with ease and effectiveness. The cultural diversity has
brought other benefits such as employing the best individuals from a large pool of individuals
and improve the quality of workforce as well as gain benefits regarding cost effectiveness and
time of training provided to them (Bharwani and Jauhari 2013). Cultural diversity can promote a
positive culture within the organisations and allow the employees to perform to their full
potential and make them feel valued, encouraged and motivated as a whole too. The

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psychological involvement further increases the performances of employees and enhances the
organisational efficiency by creating a responsive and adaptable environment. By maintaining
cultural diversity, the rate of retention of employees is increased, thereby reducing the chances of
turnover of employees and rate of absenteeism.
Not only these are the advantages of maintaining cultural diversity, but also it has helped
in developing a flexible working environment where there are a strong and diverse workforce
that can respond to critical and pressurized situations with ease and manage flexible working
hours for employees to remain focused and satisfied (Chen, Cheung and Law 2012). This would
enhance the sales and production level for the company too and allow the company to gain
competitive advantage in business too. This is an effective way of anticipating the needs of
customers and fulfill their demands. The abilities of teams are improved, which further creates
successful management of cultural diversity and allows the company to promote innovation,
creativity, solve problems with ease and furthermore make good decisions by outperforming the
homogenous groups (Duncan, Scott and Baum 2013).
Benefits and gains
The cultural diversity within tourism and hospitality industry has also improved the
services provided to customers and enhanced the skills and abilities of employees to
communicate across cultures by reducing the communication and language barriers and create a
strong customer base. The efficiency of the team depends not only on cultural diversity but also
on the nature of tasks allotted to team members, abilities and skills of team members and
urgency of tasks allotted to them. With the help of a managing cultural diversity, the company
would be able to enhance its reputation as well as encourage more innovation and creativity and

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create effective solutions for overcoming problems with ease and effectiveness. This would help
in gaining profit and competitive advantage in business as well (Fullagar and Wilson 2012). The
diversity of culture within tourism and hospitality has created a corporate vision so that the
employees can move in the right direction to accomplish the organisational goals and objectives
and enhance the delivery of services to the customers.
There are many advantages of cultural diversity in tourism and hospitality business
because it has improved the interpersonal skills of individuals and increased the ability of people
to work as teams by expanding their creative and innovative thinking. The production level also
increases on the complex tasks, which further helps in adapting to the culture of a new place and
fulfill the requirements and needs of customers effectively. By understanding other cultures,
there would be ease of managing customer interactions and promote good communication with
them too. The individuals belonging from different cultures have different needs and preferences,
and thus workers are needed to be aware of that by understanding their culture and improve the
customers' services (Janta et al. 2012). The betterment of customers' services could also lead to a
better brand image, reputation and loyalty among customers.
Cultural diversity can result in forming a good marketing strategy, and the companies
within the tourism and hospitality sector can identify the target audiences easily. Creating
cultural awareness is possible by understanding their values, beliefs, customers' behaviours and
attitudes and deliver services according to their preferences to develop an useful marketing
strategy for connecting to the market and prevent wastage of time and resources too. By
understanding the culture of people, it would be easy to manage the production of tourism and
hospitality services and furthermore conduct market research for ensuring the development of
products and services that can fulfill their demands and preferences (Madera, Dawson and Neal

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2013). Cultural diversity promotes vision to create equal opportunities for employment for
individuals and appreciates the socio-cultural and economic differences to recruit individuals
from various diversified backgrounds and culture.
Costs and consequences
The main aspect of the development of tourism and hospitality is to allow the tourists to
purchase goods and services through exchanging the leisure and recreation. The economic
backwardness and rural poverty can also have good quality. The resort hotels are mainly foreign
owned, and the same happens for the tourism agencies, which make people travel from one place
to another. The cost that is incurred and profit generated is provided to the parent companies for
improving the quality of services furthermore. The tourists mainly focus on accommodation and
cuisine, and these are all added to the import costs for materials and food (Mak, Lumbers and
Eves 2012). The hotels manage huge amounts of expenditures for good quality food, water and
other services available to the customers so that they can enjoy and relax during their stay
without making any complaints regarding the services.
There could be different consequences when culture mix with the tourism and hospitality
businesses in case there had been a lack of proper management. Tourism and hospitality focus on
the needs and satisfaction of customers, and often it becomes difficult to deal with customers
from different backgrounds and to establish a business in a new location. The policies and
principles are not followed properly, which can even lead to disaster (Nickson 2013). The cross-
cultural business environment is established, and in many cases, immigration policies are not up
to the mark, which creates difficulties to select the right candidate for the right job. Though there
are few drawbacks, still the cultural diversity can create a positive impact by developing a

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diversified group of people and handle critical problem solving tasks with ease and effectiveness
(Obrador 2012).
Actions are taken for improving the position in cultural diversity
There is need of providing training to the workers of the tourism and hospitality industry
for reducing the communication and cultural barriers and improve the nature of interaction with
people from various culture, colour, race, creed or ethnicity. The higher management of the
companies within the tourism and hospitality industry must create a corporate vision for
facilitating the understanding of various cultural and social behaviours and furthermore improve
the delivery process by keeping the customers satisfied and happy too (Solnet, Kralj and
Kandampully 2012). It is important to provide equal opportunities for all without considering
race, religion, age, gender or ethnicity. A strong diversified workforce is maintained for allowing
employees to create a good culture and understand the market segments that they are serving.
The social media involvement has further helped in spreading awareness of the company
and even promotes a healthy culture and workplace where people can work in coordination and
as a unit to bring successful outcomes (Torres, Fu and Lehto 2014). The handling of regulatory
frameworks is also essential for incorporating a high level of cultural awareness and understands
the cultural norms and behaviours properly for working properly with local authorities. Human
resource management is essential as well for managing the local employees who will need
cultural sensitivity to the local norms, rules and expectations. The managers if companies must
also develop policies of HR aligned with the cultural diversity within the tourism and hospitality
industry too (Bharwani and Butt 2012).

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Conclusion
The essay covered the most important aspects of cultural diversity within the tourism and
hospitality industry. The tourism and hospitality industry is worldwide based, and thus it is
important to adopt the culture of different places and ensure that the needs and requirements of
local people are kept satisfied. The benefits gained from maintenance of cultural diversity within
the tourism and hospitality business included reducing communication barriers, creating a good
culture within the workplace and even enhancing the productivity of the organisation largely.
The costs incurred and impact created by the cultural diversity had been demonstrated here as
well along with the development of most suitable approaches for improving the position in the
form of diversity.

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References
Bharwani, S. and Butt, N., 2012. Challenges for the global hospitality industry: an HR
perspective. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 4(2), pp.150-162.
Bharwani, S. and Jauhari, V., 2013. An exploratory study of competencies required to co-create
memorable customer experiences in the hospitality industry. International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality Management, 25(6), pp.823-843.
Chen, R.X., Cheung, C. and Law, R., 2012. A review of the literature on culture in hotel
management research: what is the future?. International Journal of Hospitality
Management, 31(1), pp.52-65.
Duncan, T., Scott, D.G. and Baum, T., 2013. The mobilities of hospitality work: An exploration
of issues and debates. Annals of Tourism Research, 41, pp.1-19.
Fullagar, S. and Wilson, E., 2012. Critical pedagogies: A reflexive approach to knowledge
creation in tourism and hospitality studies. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism
Management, 19(1), pp.1-6.
Janta, H., Lugosi, P., Brown, L. and Ladkin, A., 2012. Migrant networks, language learning and
tourism employment. Tourism Management, 33(2), pp.431-439.
Madera, J.M., Dawson, M. and Neal, J.A., 2013. Hotel managers’ perceived diversity climate
and job satisfaction: The mediating effects of role ambiguity and conflict. International Journal
of Hospitality Management, 35, pp.28-34.
Mak, A.H., Lumbers, M. and Eves, A., 2012. Globalisation and food consumption in
tourism. Annals of tourism research, 39(1), pp.171-196.

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Nickson, D., 2013. Human resource management for hospitality, tourism and events. Routledge.
Obrador, P., 2012. The place of the family in tourism research: Domesticity and thick sociality
by the pool. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(1), pp.401-420.
Solnet, D., Kralj, A. and Kandampully, J., 2012. Generation Y employees: An examination of
work attitude differences. Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 17(3), p.36.
Torres, E.N., Fu, X. and Lehto, X., 2014. Examining key drivers of customer delight in a hotel
experience: A cross-cultural perspective. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 36,
pp.255-262.