While some local customs and laws might at times seem absurd to the foreign traveller, understanding other cultures in terms of what is acceptable behaviour and what might be illegal or taboo is of great importance when travelling.
According to Expedia.co.nz TM, operated by Expedia, Inc., the world’s leading online travel company, knowing the local rules and customs of a travel destination will not only help you stay out of trouble when travelling, and avoid potential embarrassment or offence, but it can also open doors to unique and rewarding travel experiences.
With destinations across the Middle East, Africa and Asia becoming more popular with Australian travellers – and with customs and laws in these countries often being considerably different from the West – being aware of local practices and mores is increasingly important.
A new study shows that where a customer comes from plays a big role in how services are evaluated.
The study, carried out by Martin Reimann of USC, Ulrich F. Luenemann of California State University Sacramento, and Richard B. Chase of USC Marshall School, examined the impact of uncertainty avoidance on how the perception of a service drives customer satisfaction.
“Uncertainty avoidance indicates the extent to which members of a culture feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations. People in uncertainty avoiding cultures are less comfortable, while those from uncertainty accepting cultures are more tolerant of unexpected changes,” said Reimann, a USC researcher in marketing and psychology, who began the study while at Stanford University.
The study found that in cultures where uncertainty avoidance plays an important role (for example, where numerous rules and rituals are established to cope with uncertainty in the future), a service must be much closer to what customers expect than in more risk tolerant cultures. Indeed, even small deviations from expectations result in high dissatisfaction among such customers, as their large-scale empirical study revealed.
The authors emphasize that, “there is very little chance to prevent a service defect when the customer encounters a situation or behavior that does not conform to his or her cultural expectations.”
One of Dubai’s most popular beach hotels has issued guests with an “etiquette guide” after two Britons were convicted for having sex on the beach near the hotel.
The etiquette guides, which suggest the hotel’s guests could be arrested for inappropriate public displays, are left on tables during the weekly brunch event at the Madinat Jumeirah hotel.
The guests should “employ discretion” in expressing affection publicly, says the hotel, with “anything more than a peck on the cheek” likely to result in police involvement.
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Managing Asian Cultural Diversity: Cross-cultural Issues in Asia” report to their offering.
Managing Asian cultural diversity can be very complex for Western companies. Each country has its own culture, history, ideology, language and philosophy: a strategy in Taiwan may not work in China, and vice versa. Understanding the local mentality, beliefs, and even linguistic traits can make a world of difference in managing Asian employees effectively. Please attend our April 8, 2008 webcast on Asian Cross-Cultural Issues. This 90-minute session will include a 60-minute presentation, followed by 30 minutes of Q&A. The following topics are covered in this webcast:
-Diversity of Asian Cultures
-Erroneous Assumptions about Asian Cultures
-Comparison of Key Asian Cultural Concepts
-Cultural Impact on Asian Management Issues
-Common Challenges in Managing Asian Diversity
-Strategies for Effective Asian Management
-Benchmarking Practices for Global Effectiveness
In December and January, Japan heats up with the Party fever. In addition to western Christmas and New Year’s parties, Japanese people customarily hold bonenkai to celebrate the year’s finale. Bonenkai vary in style, being big or small, formal or informal, a few hours long or overnight, etc. People typically join at least one bonenkai. Some attend both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day parties as well, and it’s not unusual for a person to experience 10 parties a month or to go party-hopping during a single day. The Japanese system is greatly different from the western one, so if you party Japanese style this year there are a couple of things that you should know beforehand in order to not be embarrassed (or embarrass someone else). Here are some tips that may help you.
Oshibori, not napkins
Before the meal begins, servers will bring you an oshibori, a wet towel on a special plate. In some restaurants, the servers even unfold the oshibori in front of you and hand it to you. When you finish cleaning your hands with the oshibori, put it back on the plate or on the table if there’s no plate. As the servers take the oshibori away before serving the food, there’s no napkin for you to use during the meal
Tourism businesses in the South West are being challenged by South West Tourism to attract more overseas customers to the region in 2009 through using multi-lingual websites.
South West Tourism has teamed up with Kwintessential, a leading regional provider of cross cultural solutions, to launch an innovative competition giving three businesses the chance to win a multi-lingual website design package worth £500 for the New Year.
In these uncertain times businesses can seek to improve their marketing advantage and global reach by allowing prospective overseas customers to research in their own language every aspect of a holiday or business visit to the South West
All types of private sector tourism businesses; accommodation, attractions, cafes, restaurants & inns, tourism retail and transport operators are eligible for entry and there will be one winner from each of the eligible areas (the West of England [Gloucestershire, the Cotswolds, Forest of Dean, Bristol, Bath and Somerset], Dorset and Wiltshire and Devon and Cornwall).
Malcolm Bell, South West Tourism Chief Executive of South West Tourism, cites the strategic importance of firms thinking about their global business development.
“In these challenging times, tourism operators should look to growth opportunities. This competition highlights the need to assist potential overseas customers in researching and planning their holidays in their own language both before and during the trip. Visitors from abroad tend to book earlier so the message is timely for next year along with the favourable euro exchange rate.”
Neil Payne, Kwintessential managing director said:
“We are delighted to bring our experience and expertise from working with exporting companies to tourism. For operators wishing to attract overseas visitors, a multi-lingual website reaches potential customers in their own language, improves search engine optimisation in chosen markets and demonstrates language and cultural understanding.”
The online entry form is available at: http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/competition/.
Entrants simply describe what they are doing already to attract foreign visitors and/or why they feel they would benefit most from a website translation. The three winners will receive 1,000 words professionally translated into two languages of choice, advice on key messages across five web pages and micro website pages integrated and linked to their own website home page. Deadline for entries is 3rd December.
Notes to editors:
Kwintessential is the South West’s leading provider of cross cultural solutions for today’s businesses and organisations supplying bespoke intercultural training, translation and interpretation services.
The company was set up in 2003 by Neil Payne to fill a gap in the market for tailored cross cultural solutions to help firms competently negotiate the “cross cultural” business to business minefield and provide cost effective training, translation and interpreting services. As a well respected expert in language and cross cultural issues, Neil is regarded as an authoritative voice on topical cultural and language issues affecting business.
South West Tourism is the official regional tourist board, working to encourage the development of tourism in Bath, Bristol, Bournemouth/Poole, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Gloucestershire (including Cotswolds & Forest of Dean destinations) and Wiltshire.
I’ve watching events unfold in the global financial markets with a mixture of incredulity and fear – like most other people I suppose. What has transpired in the last couple of weeks would have seemed unthinkable a month or two ago and nobody seems to be able to call the low point in this whole mess.
What strikes me about it is the way in which certain key cultural characteristics – especially in the USA – may have been to key contributory factors to the problems. Let me briefly explain what I mean by this:
• Individualism: A key US characteristic (seen as a virtue in the States) which leads employees to have less of a sense of responsibility to the company and more of a sense of responsibility to themselves. This is one of the great strengths of the US economy but is it possible that, if left unchallenged, it can have the consequence of people making short-term decisions to better themselves at the expense of a greater whole?
• Short-termism: One of the by-products of economies which are mainly equity financed (USA, UK etc.) is that people are driven by quarterly results. This again leads to people taking short-term decisions and looking for ‘quick wins’ at the expense of a more coherent long-term strategy. This short-term outlook is, of course, exacerbated by a bonus culture which rewards people for delivering results NOW.
The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, and the Commissioner for multilingualism, Leonard Orban, have invited 16 well known European translators, writers, publishers and literary critics from different countries to a Lunch-Debate on translation and culture, to be held on 6 November in Brussels. The Lunch-Debate will be preceded by a half-day discussion among the participants focusing on translation as a key to dialogue between cultures; an intellectual bridge between small and big languages; and translation in all its forms and actors.
“I see translation as one of the expressions of multilingualism”, said Commissioner Orban, “A society is multilingual not only when its citizens can speak different languages, but also when its languages maintain a constant communication through translation. Translation is indeed a continuous negotiation between the author, the translator and the reader. In Europe, we know this only too well, negotiation being the very essence of our staying together.”
Council workers in Swansea erected a road sign informing motorists in Welsh: “I am out of the office at the moment”.
Swansea council staff were designing a bilingual road sign barring heavy goods vehicles from a street in the city and had consulted an in-house translationservice.
As the translator was not available, an automatatic e-mail response was triggered in Welsh which read: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.”
Staff mistakenly thought that it was the correct translation and had it printed on the sign beneath the message in English, which read: “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only”.
Companies setting up shop are forced to change their livery. Traffic lights are smashed in defiance. It seems astonishing that a town could detest something so much, but Larkhall does.
For it is green that provokes so much ire in this Lanarkshire town just outside Glasgow. Yes, the colour.
So far, the contempt with which the emerald tint is held in the town has prompted the sandwich chain Subway to change its traditional signage to black and the local pharmacies to switch their frontage to blue.
The reason is simple, if slightly strange, and stems from sectarianism and football rivalry. In Larkhall, green is immediately associated with Catholicism, Irish republicanism and the football team Glasgow Celtic. And in Larkhall, the vast majority of people proclaim themselves to be Protestant, unionist, and supporters of another Glasgow football team, Rangers.Read more >> Larkhall
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