Cultural diversity and Tourism

1. Chapter Two: Cultural Diversity and Tourism
 Culture and Diversity
 Cultural diversity as a tourism product
 Cultural diversity (in Visitors, host and
employees of Tourism Sector
 Impacts of Tourism on Culture

2. Culture and Diversity
Culture Defined
• Culture is the behavioral orientation that is unique to
a particular group of people.
• Culture can be defined as all the ways of life
including arts, beliefs and institutions of a
population that are passed down from generation
to generation.
• Culture has been called "the way of life for an entire
society." As such, it includes codes of manners, dress,
language, religion, rituals, art.

3. Culture…
• Culture
– Values, beliefs, attitudes, language, symbols,
rituals, behaviors, and customs unique to a
particular group of people passed from one
generation to the next
– Often defined set of rules foundation of behavior
– is learned not innate
– Dynamic and constantly changing

4. • Culture consists of both material culture and non-
material culture.
• Material culture refers to the physical objects,
resources and spaces that people use to define their
culture.
• These include homes, monuments, cities, schools,
churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, artifacts,
tools, means of production, goods and products, stores,
and so forth.
• Thoughts or ideas that make up a culture are called the
non-material culture.

5. Culture Cont’d…
• In contrast to material culture, non-material
culture does not include any physical objects or
artifacts. Examples of non-material culture
include any ideals, ideas, beliefs, values, norms
• This pattern of behavior is collective, learned and
carried through generations.
• culture cuts across different levels of society,
including national, regional, gender, generational,
class and corporate levels.
• It is important to prioritize the knowledge and
understanding of the different levels of culture in
international business strategy.

6. Diversity
• Cultural diversity, also known as multiculturalism, is the set of
characteristics that distinguishes groups within a society.
• These cultural characteristics are expressed through the value
systems, symbols, practices and rituals of every group.
• variables of diversity include age, culture, health status and
condition, ethnicity, experience, gender, sexual orientation, and
many other variables and combinations of variables.
• The ways that domestic and international tourists and
employees contribute to the diversity of the tourism and
hospitality industry cannot be ignored
• Each cultural group wants to maintain its identity, be respected
for its uniqueness, and socialize future generations to honor its
heritage

7. Embracing Cultural Diversity
• Education in cultures enhances the capacity of
personnel to understand and acknowledge the
critical aspects of cultural diversity.
• It also helps cultivate a favorable corporate
image in international markets by observing
the cultural expectations of your host
countries.
• This neutralizes the potential cultural barriers
and conflicts, such as stereotypes, that may
arise in your international business activities.

8. Culture as a tourism Product
• Nowadays, culture has been a major driver of tourism.
• People may travel:
– To visit unique Culture
– To visit similar Culture
– To study a certain culture
• Culture and tourism have a mutually beneficial relationship which
can strengthen the attractiveness and competitiveness of regions
and countries
• In most cases, culture is a major asset for tourism development
• Tourists have needs and wants to learn other culture and get
unique tourism experience from cultural tourism and those
products can be shaped to satisfy the needs and wants of
consumer.

9. Culture as a tourism product Contd...
• Tourism also provides an important means of
enhancing culture, understanding and creating
income which can support and strengthen
cultural heritage, cultural production and
creativity.
• Creating a strong relationship between tourism
and culture can therefore help destinations to
become more attractive and competitive as
locations to live, visit, work and invest.

10. Culture as a tourism product Contd...
• Culture is increasingly an important element of the
tourism product, which also creates distinctiveness in a
crowded global marketplace
• Cultural tourism products involving knowledge,
religion, art, custom, living habit, history, legend and
other cultural things can include in cultural tourism
products .
• Some people traveled specifically to gain a deeper
understanding of the culture or heritage of a destination
• Example many international tourists travel towards
southern Ethiopia so as to visit unpolluted indigenous
culture, e.g. Hamar and Konso

11. Culture as a tourism product Contd…
• Culture is a major factor in the attractiveness of most
destinations, not only in terms of tourism, but also in
attracting residents and inward investment
• Culture has been increasingly employed as an aspect of
the tourism product and destination imaging strategies
• According to Europa Nostra (2005) “more than 50% of
tourist activity in Europe is driven by cultural heritage
and cultural tourism is expected to grow the most in the
tourism sector.”
• Cultural tourism, as a major tourism motivation,
includes visits to tangible and intangible cultural
resources, with the intention to gather new information
and experiences to satisfy the visitors’ cultural needs.

12. Culture as a tourism product Contd…
• Cultural tourism product can be a composition of:
1. The core product, being the cultural tourism supply
(monuments, sclutures, cultural events, local culture, way of
Dressing, artifacts, Jewelries, visual arts, performing arts and
etc.
 The visual arts gives a way to express feeling, emotion,
opinion, or taste through visual means, for instance,
photography, painting, sculpting and drawing.
 Performing Arts have ways to express an opinion, emotion,
feeling, or taste, through means of performance, like, theatre,
public speech, dance, music and more
2. The additional product, being the general tourism product
elements and the related tourist services (general tourist
facilitates and services and transportation infrastructure).

13. Cultural tourism products can be categorized as follows:
Category Examples
Historic cultural
tourism product
Including cultural heritage and relics
Artistic cultural tourism
product
Including folk art, fork music, performance
art and architecture art.
Regional cultural
tourism product
Including local traditional culture, local
cuisine culture, local festival and ancient
architecture.
Religious cultural
tourism product
Including religious sites and events.
Recreational cultural
tourism product
Including amusement park, theme park,
botanic garden and zoo.
Scientific cultural
tourism product
Including museum, industrial tourism,
agricultural tourism, military tourism,
adventure tourism and scientific expedition.

14. Features Cultural tourism Product…
• Mckercher & du Cros (2002) proposed some
common features to create such products.
Tell a story: cultural and heritage tourism places have
been described as destinations with a story, with
cultural tourism described as the process of telling the
story
Telling a story can help tourists to better understand
local history and culture and create tourist interest in
hearing that story by making the story relevant to life.
It can also instill the destination with new meaning
and signalize tourists how to interpret the cultural
tourism products.

15. Features of Cultural tourism Product
• Make it a participatory experience: tourism by its very nature is an
active, participatory experiential activity
• Most cultural tourism products, such as cultural events, festival, and
etc. could provide opportunities for encouraging tourists’
participation.
• Focus on quality and authenticity:
• Since the tourists who will consume the cultural tourism products are
most likely well-educated and sophisticated, they are far more
culturally aware.
• So they will select the best value option with good quality and
reasonable price from the
intensive competition in the tourism market.
• The quality and authenticity on the cultural tourism products will be a
determined factor to attract and satisfy them

16. • Hospitality and tourism present a unique
opportunity to understand new cultural
experiences for both employees and the tourists.
• It is important for the personnel to understand
and appreciate different cultures to enhance the
nature of their interactions with tourists of
different cultures, religions, races, creeds, colors,
ages, genders and sexual orientations.
• It is for this reason that businesses playing their
trade in this industry must endeavor to train their
personnel to appreciate and accommodate people
from diverse backgrounds around the world.

17. Cultural diversity (in Visitors, host and
employees) of Tourism Sector
• The workforce composition in the hospitality and
tourism establishments is definitely vast and diverse.
• It is necessary to employ people from all walks of life
and nationalities so as to nurture workplace diversity
that portends positive influence and enhanced
productivity in the hospitality and tourism industry.
• Workplace diversity also enables businesses in the
hospitality and tourism industry to nurture and portray
a positive image of inclusive equal employment
opportunities for all without regard to race, gender or
nationality.

18. Cultural diversity (in employees…)
• Workplace diversity in the hospitality and
tourism industry is enhanced through visions
that promote equal employment opportunity to
cater for the different nationalities in the
market.
• The industry gets to appreciate the world's
socio-cultural and economic differences
through the recruitment of people of diverse
backgrounds.

19. Cultural diversity (in employees…)
• Businesses in tourism industry need to establish
organizational policies that not only discourage
discrimination but also encourage intercultural activities
such as cultural educational programs and forums.
• Tourism and hospitality businesses also should employ
organizational structure that comprise of people from
different regions and races and spread key appointments
to qualified staff from across the board.
• Workplace diversity not only facilitates easy
understanding of different cultural, social and economic
perspectives but also enhances the delivery of satisfactory
services through communication and observation.

20. Cultural diversity (in employees…)
• Having people from different cultural background
can make the economy more attractive for visitors
and employees
• Multiculturality is often an attraction for tourism,
offering generally an authentic experience for
visitors of different backgrounds.
• Besides, an ethnically or linguistically varied
population can also provide a linguistically more
skillful labor force, more sensitive to the needs of
visitors coming from different cultures, and create
a more comfortable environment for them.

21. Diversity (in Visitors)
• Like that of employees there is a great diversity
among visitors and Local communities
• Visitors may be discriminately treated based on
their
– Nationality
– Religion
– Physical appearance
– Gender
– Age
– Race and Ethnic group
– Gender

22. Diversity in Employees…
• As communities become more diverse, it is important
that organizations become diverse as well, for both
functional and psychological reasons.
• Functionally, companies need employees who speak
customers' languages and understand their needs.
• Psychologically, communities and customers typically
prefer to do business with companies who employ
people from their own backgrounds.
• Thus, companies in diverse communities often make
hiring for and managing a diverse culture an important
strategic element.

23. Enhancing Cross-Cultural Communication
• Education in a culture enables members of
international workforce to learn and appreciate
their diverse backgrounds.
• It enables employees to make proper
interpretations of verbal and nonverbal
communication of other cultures.
• For example, the nonverbal communication
protocols of Western and Asian cultures are
different when it comes to issues such as eye
contact and gestures.

24. • The avoidance of eye contact, for example,
underscores respect in Asian cultures while it
portrays mistrust in the American culture.
• Knowledge of these cultural differences
enhances intercultural negotiating skills.
Moreover, the proper coding of messages and
interpretation of meanings boosts sales and
fosters greater interpersonal collaborations
within multicultural workforce.

25. • The knowledge of different cultures improves the
experience and skills of employees.
• A personnel team that has experience working in
multicultural business environments enhances the
competitive advantage of international business.
• Such a culturally empowered workforce also makes it
easier for you to expand and adjust favorably to new
international markets.

26. Negative impacts of tourism on diversity
• The socio-cultural impacts of tourism described
here are the effects on host communities of direct
and indirect relations with tourists, and of
interaction with the tourism industry.
• For a variety of reasons, host communities often
are the weaker party in interactions with their
guests and service providers, leveraging any
influence they might have.
• These influences are not always apparent, as they
are difficult to measure, depend on value
judgments and are often indirect or hard to identify.

27. • Impacts arise when tourism brings changes in value
systems / behaviour, threatening indigenous identity.
• Changes often occur in community structure, family
relationships, collective traditional life styles,
ceremonies and morality.
• Tourism can cause change / loss of local identity and
values by:
• Commodification
• Standardization
• Loss of Authenticity
• Adaptation to Tourist Demands

28. Commodification
• Tourism can turn local cultures into commodities
when religious rituals, traditional ethnic rites and
festivals are reduced and sanitized to conform to
tourist expectations, resulting in what has been
called "reconstructed ethnicity.“
• Once a destination is sold as a tourism product,
and the tourism demand for souvenirs, arts,
entertainment and other commodities begins to
exert influence, basic changes in human values
may occur.
• Sacred sites and objects may not be respected
when they are perceived as goods to trade.

29. Standardization
• standardization is the process of satisfying
tourists' desires for familiar facilities.
• While landscape, accommodation, food and
drinks, etc., must meet the tourists' desire for the
new and unfamiliar, they must at the same time
not be too new or strange because few tourists are
actually looking for completely new things.
• Tourists often look for recognizable facilities in
an unfamiliar environment, like well-known fast-
food restaurants and hotel chains.

30. Loss of authenticity and staged authenticity
• Adapting cultural expressions to the tastes of
tourists or even performing shows as if they
were "real life" constitutes "staged
authenticity".
• As long as tourists just want a glimpse of the
local atmosphere, a quick glance at local life,
without any knowledge or even interest,
staging will be inevitable.

31. Adaptation to tourist demands
• Tourists want souvenirs, arts, crafts, and cultural
manifestations, and in many tourist destinations,
craftsmen have responded to the growing demand,
and have made changes in design of their products
to bring them more in line with the new customers'
tastes.
• While the interest shown by tourists also
contributes to the sense of self-worth of the artists,
and helps conserve a cultural tradition, cultural
erosion may occur due to the commodification of
cultural goods.

32. Culture clashes
• Because tourism involves movement of people to different
geographical locations, and establishment of social relations
between people who would otherwise not meet, cultural
clashes can take place as a result of differences in cultures,
ethnicity, religion, values, lifestyles, languages, and levels
of prosperity.
• The result can be an overexploitation of the social carrying
capacity (limits of acceptable change in the social system
inside or around the destination) and cultural carrying
capacity (limits of acceptable change in the culture of the
host population) of the local community.
• The attitude of local residents towards tourism development
may unfold through the stages of euphoria, where visitors
are very welcome, through apathy, irritation and potentially
antagonism, when anti-tourist attitudes begin growing
among local people.

33. Cultural clashes
• Many tourists come from societies with different
consumption patterns and lifestyles than what is current
at the destination, seeking pleasure, spending large
amounts of money and sometimes behaving in ways that
even they would not accept at home.
• One effect is that local people that come in contact with
these tourists may develop a sort of copying behavior, as
they want to live and behave in the same way.
• Especially in less developed countries, there is likely to
be a growing distinction between the 'haves' and 'have-
nots', which may increase social and sometimes ethnic
tensions.

34. Irritation due to tourist behavior
• Tourists often, out of ignorance or carelessness, fail to
respect local customs and moral values.
• When they do, they can bring about irritation and
stereotyping.
• They take a quick snapshot and are gone, and by so
acting invade the local peoples' lives.
• In many Muslim countries, strict standards exist
regarding the appearance and behavior of Muslim
women, who must carefully cover themselves in public.

35. • Tourists in these countries often disregard or are
unaware of these standards, ignoring the prevalent
dress code, appearing half-dressed (by local
standards) in revealing shorts, skirts or even bikinis,
sunbathing topless at the beach or consuming large
quantities of alcohol openly.
• Besides creating ill-will, this kind of behavior can be
an incentive for locals not to respect their own
traditions and religion anymore, leading to tensions
within the local community.
• The same types of culture clashes happen in
conservative Christian communities in Polynesia, the
Caribbean and the Mediterranean.

36. Ethical issues
• Crime generation Crime rates typically increase with the growth
and urbanization of an area, and growth of mass tourism is often
accompanied by increased crime.
• The presence of a large number of tourists with a lot of money
to spend, and often carrying valuables such as cameras and
jewellery, increases the attraction for criminals and brings with it
activities like robbery and drug dealing.
• Repression of these phenomena often exacerbates social tension.
In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, tourists staying in beachside five star
resorts close to extremely poor communities in hillside "favelas"
are at risk of pickpockets and stick-ups.
• Security agents, often armed with machine guns, stand guard
nearby in full sight, and face aggressive reactions from locals
who are often their neighbours when they go home.

37. • The commercial sexual exploitation of
children and young women has paralleled the
growth of tourism in many parts of the world.
• Though tourism is not the cause of sexual
exploitation, it provides easy access to it.
• Tourism also brings consumerism to many
parts of the world previously denied access to
luxury commodities and services.

38. The Role of Tourism Cultural Diversity Conservation
• Tourism can contribute to positive developments, not
just negative impacts. It has the potential to promote
social development through employment creation,
income redistribution and poverty alleviation.
• Other potential positive impacts of tourism include:
Tourism as a force for peace Strengthening
communities Facilities developed for tourism can
benefit residents Revaluation of culture and traditions
Encourages civic involvement and pride

39. • Travelling brings people into contact with each other and, as tourism
has an educational element, it can foster understanding between
peoples and cultures and provide cultural exchange between hosts
and guests.
• Because of this, the chances increase for people to develop mutual
sympathy and understanding and to reduce their prejudices.
• Tourism encourages civic involvement and pride Tourism also helps
raise local awareness of the financial value of natural and cultural
sites and can stimulate a feeling of pride in local and national
heritage and interest in its conservation.
• More broadly, the involvement of local communities in tourism
development and operation appears to be an important condition for
the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.
• In the end, sympathy and understanding can lead to a decrease of
tension in the world and thus contribute to peace.