Chinese Manager Intercultural Communication Adjustments in the Hotel - Essay Example

In the late 1970s, China finally decided to adopt an Open Door Policy, opening China to international tourists for the first time in many years. Prior to the adaptation of the Open Door Policy, various restrictions on the tourism industry of China limited its expansion and made it extremely difficult for tourists to visit China. Gluckman (1993) even stated that “China (had) for years been considered a hoteliers’ hell” (as cited in Huyton & Sutton, 1996, p. 22). Yu (1992) also mentioned that tourists from all over the world were very demanding on China’s undeveloped hospitality industry, and China has started considering that hotel development is a very important part of China’s tourism industry (as cited in Tsang & Qu, 2000).

In spite of such efforts, Chinese hotels’ overall quality of service likely will not reach international standards immediately. According to the study of Cai and Woods (1993), problems in the industry included a lack of property maintenance, reliable reservation system, and even poor sanitation (as cited in Tsang & Qu, 2000). Without a pre-set management system or a pool of qualified managing personnel to effectively lead the make-over, adapting western-based management in the industry was an inevitable decision to make.

However, adapting western-based management did not pose an immediate solution to such problems either. With the poor language ability and communication skills of local employees, expatriate managing staffs struggled with the installation of a new management system (Cai & Woods, 1993). Unfortunately, such struggles between the local employees and expatriates only exacerbated the symptoms of an inadequate infrastructure, while promoting high expatriate turnover and poor service from staff members.

As a means of resolving this problematic issue, Magnini and Ford (2004) suggested that western-based hotel companies should invent a suitable training program for host nationals to better understand and manage the local hospitality workers.