A Study on the servicing of culturally different guests for the hotel industry in the U.S.

Since the increasing number of foreign visitors in the U.S. incites the hotel industry to be more competitive, hotels need to expand services to meet the foreign guest\u27s needs and wants in order to stay in the business. Most often foreign guest complaints occur when the hotel services can not satisfy the guests. Misunderstandings and communication barriers occur when the hotel staff is not familiar with foreign guest\u27s culture and does not speak the guest\u27s language. This research was done to help hotel management explore the various cultural characteristics, identify the most frequent complaints of foreign guests, and discern the interpersonal and communication skills needed when interacting with culturally different guests. In addition to the library research, most data on guest complaints was collected by telephone and personal interviews of hotel employees and travel agencies such as front desk clerks, bell personnel, waiters /waitresses, and travel tour guides . The frequent complaints of foreign guests were listed to identify the various needs of several different ethnic groups. An analysis of the cultural characteristics of Japanese, Chinese, French, and German visitors was done and specific examples of cultural differentiae were noted