Dealing with multiculturalism and chain of value creation

Last week, we talked about service management. We decided that service recovery and employee responding a guest requests are vital aspect of this topic. We also saw that multiculturality and web 2.0 can become wildcards in this framework.

Let’s talk about how Sol Melia is dealing with multiculturality issues nowadays that, like a lot of international chain of hotels, is looking for his place in the tourism Chinese market.

For starters… it’s obvious that you have to follow different approaches in different countries and cultures, otherwise multiculturality won’t be a source both of problems and opportunities! We can see multiculturality as boon as well as bane.

If you want to deal with China you have to know, understand and respect his win2win /ying and yang approach. I like the way this article explain this subject… “How to win tourists from China? Send them yours!” By the way, ehotelier is also a good website into your toolbox!

How different from other countries! If you want to bring tourist from Britain, unless you want to work with mass tourism, I recommend that you try to make and alliance with a specialized outgoing travel agency.

I usually ask to my students where can you find this travel agency? In Google they reply feeling that they know the right answer.

Ok, can you provide an answer worthy of a Touristologist?

Of course you can look in Google but, what about…

Asking to an international student doing his Erasmus here?

Using the services of your country tourism offices abroad?

For instance in Spain: http://www.tourspain.es/en/TURESPANA

For instance in Catalonia: You can ask for the services of Catalan Tourist Board

Finally, last but definitely not least, you can search in the data base of a travel agency association. In this case, ABTA could be appropriate! You can search and filter your results for destination and activity (for instance, travel for single parents).

You are a good Touristologist not only for the things that you know but also because when you don’t , you know where to look at and have an attitude to never surrender until you get the information needed!

But let’s finish with Sol Meliá’s tale in china.

Sol Meliá is a global company. Does it have to face multiculturalism issues? Does it have to face chain of value creation? Of course it has!

I strongly recommend this article (I also recommend www.hotelnewsnow.com for your toolbox!) I only want to highlight this sentence “To guarantee reciprocal awareness of corporate culture and management systems, in addition to enhancing sales and customer loyalty, Sol Meliá and Jin Jiang will create “mixed teams” in the 12 hotels to ensure the cultural adaptation of the Reception areas, guest rooms, and food and beverage services to European and Chinese preferences.”

Wow! New tourism destinations, new countries of origin, new segments, new technologies that allow us to create, communicate and commercialize tourism products in different and innovative ways…. Interesting times for Touristologists!!!