Breaking Communication Barriers in Tourism and Hospitality

Industry

As businesses become increasingly globalized it forces a growing number of businesses to interact

across cultural boundaries. Since culture affects almost all aspects of everyday communication, there
is a need to put more of an emphasis on communication barriers by the hospitality industry. Managers
are exposed on almost every organizational level to other national cultures. This intercultural service
encounters caused by globalisation can affect the service levels provided by the hospitality industry.
An individual state of mind towards other cultures may influence the hospitality industry as a whole in
terms of certain cross-cultural decisions. In other words, the level of cultural openness could affect
how companies act in certain countries. This is why hospitality industry must retain information on
communication barriers and use this research to train culturally aware managers and hospitality
education must nurture its students to embrace diversity so they are qualified to meet this demand.

We live in South Africa - a country filled with different races, religions and cultures. We are a diverse
and unique nation but we are a divided nation because of the five intercultural barriers that we use.
These barriers are what stops people from effectively communicating with one another. In this essay I
will be discussing these intercultural communication barriers and how they can lead to a breakdown in
communication within the hospitality industry. These barriers include ethnocentrism, prejudice,
stereotypes, language barriers and non-verbal communication. I will also discuss methods on how to
overcome these barriers to create a fruitful working environment.

Isn’t it amazing, how this world is made up of so many different individuals’ part of different cultures.
This makes people come together and stand together in a group. There is nothing wrong with
ethnicity, it just means a group of people following the same culture. Nevertheless, what happens
when ethnocentrism takes over? Ethnocentrism is the tendency of individuals to elevate their own
culture as the standard against which they judge others, and to see their own as superior to others
(Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002: 1). Although ethnocentrism allows people to praise their
own cultures and take pride in it, it is thought of as a damaging trait amongst people because people
who are ethnocentric are unaccepting of cultural diversity and narrow-minded towards other cultures.
This often stops different cultured people within the hospitality industry from communicating because
they think that they are better than the other culture and therefore have nothing in common with them
so they refrain from communicating with one another.

This is a few examples of ethnocentrism in the hospitality industry. A Manager of the food and
beverage department is having a meeting discussing what food shall be given to the staff throughout
the week when one work asks if they can have umvubo because it is an ideal meal to eat on a warm
day the manager immediately says no because she thinks that this is disgusting and who would want
to eat that why can’t they just eat a burger and fries like normal people. Another example given by
Laxson (1991:18) of ethnocentrism would be how Colonialists have frequently been known to justify
their predations by altruistically claiming that they are enriching and elevating the lives of poor
backward natives. I know we are talking about the hospitality industry and that this has nothing to do
with the colonisation that started in the 15th century but this statement corresponds with what I am
about to say: The Hospitality Industry itself is ethnocentric. They use European culture throughout the
hotel industry because they think that whatever makes their ways superior should be the standard for
everyone. This is shown to us because the hospitality industry only brings European culture into the
hotel by exclusive use of English names of signs noticeboards, menus, tent cards at reception and
elsewhere proclaiming that French, German and Italian are spoken. Not one African language is even
referred to. Neither is the excessive playing of European classical and popular music in public areas
and lifts even the hold function on the telephone system at most hotels play European music. There is
also European and other non-African restaurants and jacket and tie dress codes. French and other
haute cuisine menu terminology dominate the restaurants that also offer only continental or full English
breakfast in the morning and afternoon tea in the afternoon. This is done because it is strongly
believed that European culture is the best this is not necessarily intentional discrimination but it is the
consequence of the influence of Europe and their unquestioned model of what a good hotel should be
like.

A strategy to overcome both of the problems faced in the examples given would be to design hotels so
that they promote diversity. Not only by training management and staff in cultural sensitivity or in the
way that they talk to customers but to incorporate different kinds of cuisine and culture in a hotel and
not only what a certain culture sees as being appetising, lavish or appropriate. For example, this can
be done by having a come as you are dress code instead of a suit and tie code because not everyone
sees wearing a suit and tie as fancy or normal.

The next barrier that I will be discussing is prejudice. Gordon Allport termed prejudice in his classic
book, The Nature of Prejudice, as “an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization”
(1954:9). As I have said before we live in a diverse nation filled with different cultures so after a certain
period of time we interact with people from different cultures. We then start to judge that person based
on certain things that they do and the more that we meet people from the same cultural group with
similar characteristics the more we start to create a perception that everyone from that cultural group
is the same, this can either be a bad or good perception. Prejudice stops people in the hospitality
industry from communicating because once someone has a bad prejudgement of someone they don’t
want to mix with someone that is like that so they avoid communicating and interacting with people
them.

This is an example of prejudice in the hospitality industry. The employment interview is one of the
ways that prejudice takes place in the Hospitality industry. For instance, a General manager is
interviewing possible employees to be his assistant manager A Black male comes for the interview but
before even talking to the Black male the Manager already thinks that the Xhosa people are lazy and
take everything for granted and that they just mess up everything that they put their hands on. So
because of his prejudice he won’t hire anyone from African cultures because he thinks that all of these
African cultures is the same as being Xhosa. Another example of prejudice is when a young group of
coloured people come to sit and eat at a restaurant and the waiters take long to help them because
they are young and the waiters think that they will not be tipped so they are not as important so the
waiter goes to help the older couple that came in after the young group of people instead. Not only do
they take long to help the group of young coloured people are also tells them that they are going to
have to prepay before they have even ordered. When the waiter is asked why she responds by saying
we have had issues with people like you before.

It is very difficult to identify prejudice because people often hide it or deny the fact that they are
prejudice. So it makes it nearly impossible to fully overcome prejudice but this is few strategies to
make it less discriminatory when hiring staff instead of having one person that interviews the possible
employees to have aboard of people from different cultural background’s that interview the possible
employees so that there is less place for possible prejudice during the hiring process. Another way to
stop prejudice during the service process is to train staff to treat everyone the same when they come
to the establishment and not to favour one customer over the other.

The third barrier that I shall be discussing is stereotypes. Stereotypes are closely related to prejudice
in some aspects their characteristics overlap, but stereotypes are a distinct occurrence. A stereotype
is a fixed general image or set of characteristics that a lot of people believe represent a particular type
of person or thing (Marcus: 2008: 21) Strangely, there is almost no texts written which deal with the
presence of cultural stereotypes among the workers or guests in the hospitality industry or even the
people working in a management level, even though this is an industry in which by its own
professional demands is in constant contact with people from other cultures. This is why stereotypes
have an effect on the attitudes and behaviour of people in the hospitality industry towards diverse
peoples. These attitudes and behaviours can have a negative impact the effectiveness and even the
success of the hospitality industry because even if the stereotype may be correct, it can still be
emotionally damaging to that group people.

This is some examples of stereotypes in the hospitality industry. Every day when workers enter or exit
the reef hotel they are all searched upon entering and exiting the hotel. When the workers are
searched they are just briefly given a quick pat down but when the coloured workers enter and exit the
hotel they are thoroughly searched because they are stereotyped as violent and that they always have
knives on them. Another example of a stereotypes would be when there is a promotion available in the
hotel to be the head of accounting and two people applied the first person has been working there for
five years and is more experience but the second person that is less qualified and has only worked
there for three years gets the job because he is Asian and Asians are the best at working with
numbers.

A Strategy to overcome stereotypes in the hospitality industry is to have team building activities where
people from different cultures get to spend time together, by doing this the workers get to interact with
different cultures and realise that not everyone with the same characteristics are the same but even
though they might still believe in the same stereotypes it at least creates a bridge of communication
between the two people from different cultures so the communication between them will be better
because they understand each other’s cultures a bit more. Another way to overcome this is by having
workshops that encourage the acceptance of differences rather than demonizing differences. It will
help the staff understand that everyone is a product of their individual upbringing and background, and
each person is wonderfully different in their uniqueness. This will help staff accept these differences
and even encourage them, this is how the hospitality industry can overcome and redefine stereotypes.

The fourth barrier that I will be discussing is something we use every day to communicate yet it breaks
down the communication process in the hospitality industry – language. The American linguists
Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager formulated the following definition: “A language is a system of
arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.” (Robins and Crystal: 1: 1999)
Language barriers occur when people do not speak the same language, or do not have the same
ability level in a language. However, barriers can also occur when people are speaking the same
language. Sometimes barriers occur when we use inappropriate levels of language or we use jargon
or slang which is not understood. An example of a language barrier in the hospitality industry is when
a server wants to take an order but the guest has a physical impediment to language such as
stuttering. So when he tries to take the guests order he does not understand what the guest is saying
so he just ignores the guest or brings them anything he thinks they will like. Another example would be
when most of the workers in the hotel including the managers speak a certain language and although
everyone can speak English during meetings they forget that some of the workers doesn’t understand
their mother tongue and delegates work to the employees in that language this leads to a breakdown
in the hospitality industry because the employees that only understand English do not understand
what is going on and therefore cannot compete what they have been told to.

A strategy to overcome this barrier is to teach employees to think about who they are communicating
with and what their language needs may be. Teach employees to use plain language, use repetition,
be respectful and patient and to speak with appropriate volume for the situation and use clear diction
and by listening actively to other people and letting them know that you are listening is an excellent
way to overcome language barriers. Another strategy to overcome language barriers is to teach
hospitality employees a frequent language used in the area if they they do not understand it so that
they can communicate more effectively with the guests or other staff or to use a reliable translator
service or to hire a translator for the hotel. You can also use practical methods of explaining things as
well as language to make sure that everyone understands clearly.

The fifth communication barrier is Non-verbal Communication. Nonverbal communication is a process

of generating meaning using behaviour other than words (Kitchen: 2012: 181) Non-verbal
communication differs for each individual, especially from one culture to another. A person’s culture
forms their non-verbal communication. There are different meanings in non-verbal communication this
is why miscommunication can happen when inter-cultural people communicate. People can offend
others without meaning to due to their cultural differences in non-verbal communication. There are
many forms of Non-verbal language such as proxemics, kinesics, haptics, facial expression, eye
contact and paralanguage. This is examples of Non-verbal communication barriers in the hospitality
industry. There is an Afrikaans Manager in a hotel that gets upset with one of his staff members
because he thinks they are uninterested and untrustworthy because they do not look him in the eyes
when communicating with him but the staff member is a Xhosa man and was taught that it is rude to
look at your elders in their eyes. A Jewish Female Hostess in a restaurant is busy welcoming guests at
the door when a male guest sticks out her hand to shake it and instead of shaking his hand she smiles
at him and nods her head, this offends the guest because he does not know why she would not shake
his hand.

This is a few strategies to help overcome Non-verbal communication barriers. Teach management to
pay attention to nonverbal signals and to teach staff what different non-verbal communication signs or
gestures mean in different countries to avoid misunderstanding. Have training days where you teach
workers about the correct distance to stand from guests, the correct posture to use when talking with
guests or even other co-workers so that you look intrusted and show respect. Teach them the correct
tone of voice for certain situations so that they do not sound rude or angry and don’t offend someone.

I have now discussed ethnocentrism, prejudice, stereotypes, language and non-verbal barriers. One
can now see that communication is not a one-way street and that there are misunderstandings
because people come from different cultures and are taught to communicate in different ways. By
doing this we shall become cultural relativistic which means that we shall believe that all beliefs,
customs and ethics are relative to the individual, within one’s own society. This will help us to realise
that no one has a right to judge anyone elses culture and that each culture is unique.

By using the strategies that I have provided it will help people in the hospitality industry to overcome
the five communication barriers. This ensures us that statements made in the hospitality industry will
not just be heard but understood.