Financial Management

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IMPERIAL INSTITUTE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

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UNIVERSITY OF WALES TRINITY SAINT DAVID

Contents
1. Introduction..............................................................................................................................3

2. Literature Review.....................................................................................................................4

3. The investigation of intercultural issues and challenges and their effects in the hospitality
sector................................................................................................................................................5

3.1 Impact from social behavior to hospitality sector..................................................................5

3.2 Impact of Language barriers to hospitality sector..................................................................6

4. The challenges faced by today’s leaders and mangers in the amidst of intercultural issues....6

5. Recommendations to overcome the issues and challenges faced by the hospitality sector by
using global case studies..................................................................................................................8

6. Conclusion and recommendation for future research.............................................................10

7. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................11

References......................................................................................................................................12

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1. Introduction

There is a growing trend in tourism industry in Sri Lanka since 1947 and country has
continuously attracting tourists and foreign investors to the country. The placement of the country
is major reason behind to attract more and more visitors to the Sri Lanka. In order to face this
high demand both public and private sector collectively develop the necessary facilities and
infrastructures within the country including airports, roads, hotels and spas, transportation system
etc. On the other hand, the diverse culture of the country and other special establishments for
tourists has offering highly memorable and unique experiences for tourists. The authorized
government body for the tourism sector is The Ceylon Tourism Board and it was commenced in
1996. Tourism development authority also consider as other authorise body to handle the tourism
industry (Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, 2019)

Currently the tourism industry is facing many challenges due to complexities and problems in
external and internal factors. Cultural issues can be identifying as one of the major challenging
area for the Sri Lankan tourism industry and this cause to arise intercultural issues within the
industry. Main purpose of this study is to identify and describe those major intercultural issues
and its influence towards the hospital industry in Sri Lanka.

Initial part of the assignment provide literature reviews in relations to the inter cultural issues and
challenges in the hospitality industry in Sri Lanka today and how those issues and challenges and
their effects in the hospitality sector. Further this is provide description in relation to the
challenges faced by today’s leaders and mangers in the amidst of intercultural issues. This
provides recommendations through the global case studies as well.

2. Literature Review
The word culture can be defined by using different types of meanings in accordance to the several
types of context (Nicholls 2011). Basically culture is reflect about the beliefs, customs, mode of
life which are accepted by group of people and shred with each other’s in a specific society. In
other term, culture is developed through the certain human intervention or arises due to the
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human activity. According to this definition, culture is mainly used to describe something
sophisticated or to suggest a several types of artifacts chosen and cultivated by the society by
considering the aspects belongs to heritages. According to the Luka et al. (2013), culture is offers
high awareness regarding particular person’s identity, historical details, roots and it is provide
hint about the community, which this person is belonging. Individual’s behaviors and attitudes
controls and regulated via the culture (Choi and Kim 2013). There are numerous forces, which are
shaped the culture specially, religion parties, leaders, political power distribution, storytellers as
well as historians etc.(Poprawski 2009). With this clarification it can be concluded that different
types of issue and challenges can be arise from diverse cultural background due to the
misunderstand among each other’s. This may arise not due to the language barriers but also due to
the social behaviors of different people.

In accordance to the Sri Lankan context of tourism industry cultural awareness level and the
intercultural communication now become very important to engage with the tourists who visit Sri
Lanka and make them satisfy.

SLTDA survey (2016), the conceivable cultural issues are mainly due to the two different reasons
such as majority of the tourists are not aware about the local cultures and they are engaging with
the inappropriate behaviors as well. By engaging with the tourists, local tourists faced huge risks
as well. This survey further describe that local citizens are fail to carry out effective
communication with the tourists due to language barriers and as a result it is hard to inform about
custom, traditions and cultural differences for the tourists.

3. The investigation of intercultural issues and challenges and their

effects in the hospitality sector.

According to the literature survey major intercultural issues influence for the hospitality sector in
Sri Lanka are Language barriers and diverse social behaviors.

3.1 Impact from social behavior to hospitality sector

According to the previous definition group of people can recognize culture as unclear set of
behavior norms, beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, as well as core values collective team of people
and influence the behavior of members. Generally our behaviors depend on the out cultural values

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and perceptions. If it is right or wrong it is hard to give up the behavior pattern. This behavioral
factor has close interconnectivity with the hospitality sector when make contact among the local
peoples and tourists who come from the different cultures. When evaluating the hospitality
industry in Sri Lanka social behavior of people influence as per the fallowing way.

- Sri Lankans highly respect for the religion places in Sri Lanka and tourists not properly
respects for that place because of their wrong attitude towards this culture. This may arise
conflict between the local and tourists
- Food consumption behaviors of Sri Lankans are very different from the other regions of
the world and this may disturb the food consumption behaviors of tourists and make them
dissatisfied.

3.2 Impact of Language barriers to hospitality sector

The high proficiency of different foreign languages is one of the basic needs to successful
communication in hospitality sectors. Various types of know how skills and intercultural skills
can easily make combination between the foreign culture and local culture. According to the Sri
Lankan context hospitality industry facing challenge of lack of language proficient people in the
country. As a result, some tourists do not like to visit Sri Lanka. This limitation cause to poor
intercommunication between the locals and internationals. Therefore, tourists cannot easily reveal
their needs and wants. As well as they cannot easily get information or ideas from locals due to
poor commutation abilities of local. Thus, language barriers can be recognized as significant
challenge to promote the hospitality industry of Sri Lanka.

4. The challenges faced by today’s leaders and mangers in the amidst of

intercultural issues.

Leadership and management role is playing an important task in each industry. In accordance to
that, leaders and managers highly contribute for the development and sake of the hospitality
industry as well. According to the findings of previous sections hospitality industry in Sri Lanka
facing many challenges due to the intercultural issues in the hospitality industry. Most influential
intercultural issues identified are language barriers and social behavioral changes. Those key
issues have direct and indirect impact towards the leaders and management decisions they also
facing numerous challenges when engaging with the intercultural issues.

The importance of acceptable manner of behavior and the language proficiency highly recognized
in the today’s context and they are playing very critical role in the hospitality setting. According
to the (Wolvin 1994), both these concepts can be identify as the key to achieve competitiveness,
productivity as well as the quality. Maintain better communication with the people and dealing

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with people can be identify as the most critical challenges face by the managers in hospitality
sector( Kavanagh 2002). Miscommunication and wrong behaviors may have direct impact
towards the organizational effectiveness through loss of credibility and loss of prestige and finally
cause to arise financial as well as non-financial business issues (Łasiński 2000).

According to study conducted by Lolli (2013), nearly 80% of the managers and leaders in the
hospitality sector spending their time to manage communication and behavioral related activities
of peers, superiors, subordinates as well as hotel guests.

It can recognized that Culture of a particular country is highly interconnect with the behavior as
well as language usage (Kiełbasiewicz-Drozdowska and Radko 2006).This is highly influence of
the hospitality workforce and diversity among those employees may depend on the different
ethnic, educational background as well as socio economic and generational changes( Lolli 2013).
Author further describe that language barriers and the behavioral issues arise within the industry
because of this cultural deviations. Therefore, hospitality leaders and managers need to put great
attempt to combine those different cultures and proactively coordinate company’s operations
process by fulfilling life style expectations, needs, and values of subordinates to achieve set
objectives and goals. This is reflect that functioning in a high competitive and global hospitality
setting managers are requiring to be more confidence, motivate as well as inspiring (Brownell
2003). Leaders in the hospitality sector facing the challenge of multicultural staff and
multicultural guest when disseminate ideas and information. Organizational managers should
carefully design a very effective nature of language training and the behavioral training for
workforce to provide high quality service for the organizational target audience (Brownell 2003).

Other most challenging area is manager’s inability to share their knowledge to goal achievements
due to the ineffective usage of the language. As a result employees become very confused,
frustrated, demotivate and unappreciated. This may lead high turnover rates in Hospitality sector.

When consider about the executive leaders in the hospitality sector, they should practice different
types of behaviors and communication methods to deal with different level of positions. This may
cause to time consuming and misunderstanding between each other’s. Other challenge faced by
the leaders, required to make changes in their existing leadership styles. Traditional leadership
qualities and strategies are not much suitable with the current contexts and leaders need to adapt
according to the new globally accepted leadership theories.

Other key challenge is the high level of complaints made by the guests and employees. Because
of this reason, leaders need to satisfy both parties. Guest satisfactions as well as the employee
satisfaction are similarly important for the business hospitality sector. Both are highly required to

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fulfill the organizational goals and objectives. Therefore balancing the need of both customers
and employees is very challenging area.

5. Recommendations to overcome the issues and challenges faced by the

hospitality sector by using global case studies.

When analysis about the global context of hospitality industry, cultural dimensions are playing an
important role. Among those cultural aspects, social behavior of people in different cultural
circumstances, language usage and language proficiency become critical points for the growth of
hospitality industry. Hospitality sector needs to concern regarding the hotel employees as well as
guests when manage the cultural dimensions. There are so many reasons that hospitality
professionals need to pay more attention and take necessary actions to manage them properly.

According to the identification by Steiner and Reisinger (2004), high growth of motivation to
travel is highly perceived through these experiencing cultural differences. In last few decades,
tourism sector of the world experienced the high level of diversification and continuing growth
and it is the fastest growing economic sector in the world as well (World tourism
organisation).According to the records by World tourism Organisation international tourist arrival
increased averagely by 4% in last few years .

Fallowing global scenario can be stated to describe about the ways and means that can implement
to overcome issues and problems currently facing by the global tourism industry.

The first case study is about the Poland and in 2014 nearly 16 million of foreign tourists were
visited to Poland and there was a significant growth in when compared to the previous years.
According to the interpretations by Turystyka (2013), nearly 5.2million foreign tourists who
visited Poland chose hotels and other similar types of establishments in order to fulfill their
accommodation needs and wants. Those visitors come from different types of socio cultural
backgrounds and nationalities (Turystyka w 2013). With the high growing potential of this tourist
arrival, it is clear that interpersonal interaction among the people who are come from the different
type’s nationalities as well as cultures also continue. In such circumstances, hospitality
professional need to recognize and understand with the people who are come from different types
of cultural backgrounds. In order to face this challenge many hotel chains in Poland started to find
out better expansion opportunities in the overseas market ( Hu et al. 2002). Because it is support
to learn and experience new cultures and languages from those countries. Sri Lankan hotel chains
also can implement same strategy to overcome current cultural issues currently facing.

The Accor hotel case is another good example and it is opened up huge number of hotels by
targeting major cities all around the world (accor.com). Hotel managers are frequently engaging
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with different international assignments and they are sent to different cultural destinations to
handle day-to-day operations (Weber and Ladkin 2010). Main purpose of this strategy is getting
the idea about culture of each country they target and make hotel culture in accordance to those
features. This make easier to adapt company according to the country’s requirement.

The third case study is about the Hilton hotel chain. According to the Weber and Ladkin (2010),
the cultural diversity is a major result of globalization and this diversity can be highly seen in the
hospitality workforce. According to the Hilton case, there are 300,000 number of workforce work
under the hotel chain including managers, franchisers, corporate team members and they are from
nearly 93 number of countries. This is describing that different cultures have to work together and
share information and ideas to carryout daily duties. This nature of cooperation and
communication is highly important in the hospitality sector and those employees serve customers
who have to be supported by other team members. Maintain better coordination among the staff
members can be recognized as an ideal way to serve guest and solve their problems and issues.
According to the strategy of this hotel, temporary workers and the contact employees highly
required to communicate with other permanent employees and sectional heads to maintain good
behavior and communication with guests.

Other recommended strategy is maintaining a well-developed human resource function within the
company to get competitive advantage and increase the effectiveness level. According to the
identification by Casado (2001), hospitality industry is highly labour intensive and human
resource management is one of the complex processes. Not only that effectiveness of the
hospitality industry also depends on the effective communication and the way of behavior of
hospitality related companies. Hospitality companies need to develop broad understanding
regarding the cultural deviations that leads to different types of communication misunderstanding
and ineffective observes regarding the managing, rewarding, as well as motivating culturally
different employees. Understanding those issues and implementation of different team and group
activities may support to minimize the employee frustration and dissatisfactions. This is one of
the essential needs to provide satisfactory level of service to the customers who visit hotel or any
other hospitality service-providing center (LeBlanc et al 1995).

6. Conclusion and recommendation for future research

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Improve the awareness regarding many cultures existence and their diverse characteristics
investigation is one of the most essential requirements to improve the effectiveness and efficiency
level of the hospitality business in Sri Lanka. Still there are so many gaps in existing findings and
future researches are highly required to examine about the various directions of those cultural
factors and their consequences.

The first recommendations is the study of commonalities as well as differences existence with
cultures and consider it as most important aspect to understand the perception and consumer
behavior in relation to the hospitality industry (Nicholls 2011). According to the perception by
Taylor and McArthur (2009), there is lack of information regarding the significant and the
influence of cultural factors towards the customer expectations regarding the hospitality industry.
Researchers can deeply investigate about the major expectations of guests who are visit in Sri
Lanka come from different cultural backgrounds.

The second factor is about the examination of customer-to-customer interaction in the hospitality
industry that is come from diverse nature of cultures. There is less number of empirical
researchers regarding this topic and it is important to study this context in the future research
(Nicholls 20110.

Third recommendation is the applicability of polish hospitality business by using the talent from
well-qualified managers. This is enhancing the managerial competencies essential for the future
leaders to carry out their operations in effective manner within different types of cultural
background. Thus, future researchers can provide suitable recommendation for the future leaders
to become successful in the hospitality industry.

7. Conclusion

The tourism industry of Sri Lanka is rapidly growing in the present context when compared to the
last few years. Because now Sri Lanka is become a popular tourist destination in the world due to
natural heritage and the historical background. With this growth of the tourist, sector the
hospitality industry also rapidly growing. However, there are few challenging areas to be
recognized as well. Cultural issues are the major influencing area for the hospitality industry in
Sri Lanka. According to the literature survey, the identical cultural issues facing by the hospitality
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industry is language barriers and the changing nature of social behaviours. Country to country,
region to region it can recognize different types of language usage and different nature of social
behaviour among people. In hospitality industry, both of these aspects are making so many
barriers. In Sri Lankan context traditional way of behaviour not accepted by many countries and
Sinhala language not popular around the world. Because of this reason hospitality, business
owners and government bodies need to put additional effort to combine behaviours and the
language of foreigners with the local. When analysis about some world case studies, there are
most valuable recommendations available to minimize those language barriers and the
behavioural issues. Leaders and organisational managers also facing numerous issues when
dealing with the people who are come from diverse cultures. In this, context managers and leaders
need to get high commitment from workforce to handle those people come from different cultural
background. Future researchers also need to investigate about this subject further more in order
to make successful development within the hospitality industry in Sri Lanka.

References
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Accor.com, www.accorhotels-group.com/en/franchiseand-management/our-contracts/our-
franchise-contract.html

Brownell, J., 2003. Applied research in managerial communication: The critical link between
knowledge and practice. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 44(2), pp.39-
49.

Brookes, M., Altinay, L., Gannon, J. and Nicholls, R., 2011. Customer‐to‐customer interaction
(CCI): a cross‐cultural perspective. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality
Management.

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Choi, Y., Kim, Y.S., Pekelnicky, D.D. and Kim, H.J., 2013. Preservation and modification of
culture in family socialization: Development of parenting measures for Korean immigrant
families. Asian American journal of psychology, 4(2), p.143.

Casado M. (2001), Theory of the effect of Compensation on turnover in hospitality companies,

“Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Education”, 13 (3/4), pp. 28–33.

Hu W-T. (T), Martin L., Yeh J-M.R. (2002), Cross-Cultural Impact and Learning Needs for
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Kavanagh, M.H. and Ashkanasy, N.M., 2006. The impact of leadership and change management
strategy on organizational culture and individual acceptance of change during a merger. British
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Kiełbasiewicz-Drozdowska, I. and Radko, S., 2006. The role of intercultural communication in

tourism and recreation. Studies in Physical Culture & Tourism, 13(2).

Ladkin, A. and Weber, K., 2010. Career aspects of convention and exhibition professionals in
Asia. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

Lolli, J.C., 2013. Interpersonal communication skills and the young hospitality leader: Are they
prepared?. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 32, pp.295-298.

Luka, I., Vaidesvarans, S. and Vinklere, D., 2013. Educating Tourism students for work in a
multicultural environment. Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, 13(1), pp.1-29.

http://jobs.h i ltonworldw ide.com/en/why-choose-us/workplace-d iversit y/ culture/?

cntry=united-states, 05.07.2015.

Poprawski, M., 2016. Intergenerational transmission of values and cultural sustainability: the
cultural participation of local, small town communities in Poland. Law, Social Justice and Global
Development Journal, 20.

Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority,( 2019), http://www.sltda.lk/home

SLTDA survey (2016), http://www.sltda.lk/statistics

Steiner, C.J. and Reisinger, Y., 2004. Enriching the tourist and host intercultural experience by
reconceptualising communication. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 2(2), pp.118-137.

Wolvin, A.D., 1994. Communication in the hospitality industry. International Journal of

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