ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN SERVICE PROVISION IN HOTELS

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ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN SERVICE PROVISION IN HOTELS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Taking under consideration the vast importance of tourism and hospitality industry for the economic prosperity of Greece (Atsalakis et al., 2014) and its people, hospitality management representatives have to strive to assure customer satisfaction, as the best way to assure profits and blooming business (Song et al., 2012), while at the same time young people interested in maximizing their chances of being employed in this prosperous yet highly competitive field have to be adequately trained to succeed in the global hospitality market place.

The role of foreign languages in the delivery of quality service is significant in that they are an important tool to make a guest feel at home, hence draw more brand loyalty and larger cash flows (Torres & Kline, 2013).

The current paper aims at highlighting the current needs of hospitality management in Greece in terms of efficiency in foreign languages, as the first step towards offering future hospitality employees a competitive advantage through the development of successful higher education curricula and methodologies.

Therefore, in following the international literature will be reviewed, the research process the current paper is based on will be presented and its most significant findings as well as recommended concrete actions and future research will be highlighted.

Everything that makes the guest’s everyday life more convenient, such as communication, can affect the tourist demand according to Pulina and Biagi (as cited in Chassapopoulos et al., 2014). Torres & Kline (2013) have examined the effect of hotel employees’ behavior to tourist satisfaction naming among others the importance of professionalism and friendliness as well as the ability to understand guests’ needs and effectively solve any problems, while the overall importance of service quality to customer satisfaction and retention has been proven (Deng et al., 2013).

There have been international studies examining the consumers’ language preferences. Holmqvist et al. (2014) have found that tourists who receive service in a language other than their first one are less likely to leave tips or to recommend the service to others. But even more important consumers tend to fear that they will not be correctly understood if using a second language, either because they do not trust their language proficiency level or because they judge some topics of communication as very important. According to Grewal et al. (cited in Holmqvist et al., 2014) feeling in control over the service the tourists are receiving affects their whole perception of the level of service received. Therefore, being allowed to express needs and wishes in the mother tongue relieves unnecessary tension. Language is also found to have an emotional correlation with the guests’ attitudes (Holmqvist et al., 2014) regarding a sense of community with people who share the same language, and an identification with the company that uses it making them feel at home away from home (Poon & Low, 2005).

Hotel information and reservations, customer service during holidays and after sales customer care are the key points of the tourism value chain (Weiermair, 2006) in the global market. Understanding the inbound tourist culture through the language (Zorina et al., 2014) and engaging in an open dialogue that uses both verbal and nonverbal tools to combat stereotypes and misunderstandings support a successful approach of the RATER service quality model factors, namely reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness (Czaplewski et al., 2002).

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The so called hospitality language, hence “all linguistic expressions which relate to and represent hospitality concerns” (Blue & Harun, 2003) throughout the stay of the guest, follows some distinctive rules, such as the use of a rather fixed vocabulary of welcoming and serving a guest and the formal behavior rules – including accepted phraseology, idioms – slang, gestures, handling problematic situations, cultural interpretations to social issues, etc. – relating to the cultural background of each guest. Therefore problems in intercultural communication may arise if sufficient use of the target language is not accompanied by the ability to understand, think and act accordingly to the target culture (Knapp et al., 1987).

Foreign language skills have indeed been identified as important managerial skills by several researchers (Agut et al., 2003; Connolly & McGing, 2006; Çizel et al., 2007). Managers should be equipped with both communicative and intercultural competence to be able to adapt and excel in the competitive work environment and foreign languages are the way to avoid stereotypes and gain insight into foreign people’s mentality (Zorina et al., 2014). As cited in Russel et al. (2004) fluency in foreign languages is also a key element in developing business links with overseas business partners or foreign colleagues. The

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

To understand the impact of foreign language in service provision in hotel
To understand the relationship between foreign language and service provision in hotel

RESEARCH QUESTIONS