Award Date

5-2017

Degree Type

Professional Paper

Degree Name

Master of Science in Hotel Administration

Department

Hotel Administration

First Committee Member

Mehmet Erdem

Number of Pages

35

Abstract

More than ever, globalization affects the hospitality industry with tremendous growth of international travelers—in the United States, inbound international visitation rose from around 25 million in 1985, to almost 67 million in 2012 (Mowforth & Munt, 2016). The concept of globalization, according to Robertson (1992), associates the integration and connectivity of culture and communities, while minimizing preformed boundaries. Half of all United States visitation comes from overseas travelers, with the largest share of foreign visitors coming from Japan, China, Brazil and South Korea (U.S. Travel Association, 2016). The United States predicts visitation from Brazil to increase by 70% from the years 2013-2018, while in that same time period visitation from China is expected to increase by 220% (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2014).

The United States, however, is not prepared to fully accommodate international visitors; Korean and Japanese travelers to the U.S. find few on-property adaptions relating to their cultural behavior, while other visitors struggle to communicate with staff untrained in multiple languages (Heo, Jogaratnam, & Buchanan, 2003). Despite advances in speech translation technology, there still remains limits to language, recognition, and simultaneous interpretation in such tools (Nakamura, 2009). International visitors to the United States rank language barriers as a high area of continued frustration and generally look for hospitality services that communicate in their language, understand local customs, and that have a familiarity with their culture (Li, Lai, Harrill, Kline, & Wang, 2011). Despite such issues, little to no research exists on the implementation of technology-based hospitality solutions.

Keywords

Globalization; International travel; Foreign language hospitality services

Disciplines

Business | Hospitality Administration and Management | Tourism and Travel

File Format

pdf

File Size

57 Kb

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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