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This study aims to further an understanding of hospitality employees’ perceptions of their customers in the context of service encounter by utilizing the concepts of contact hypothesis and cultural distance in a multi-ethnic environment. The study compares perceptions of Chinese immigrants working in restaurants of their British patrons (from a remote culture) and Chinese patrons (from a proximate culture). The service encounter takes place in the London Chinatown. The dynamics of Chinatown as a “third space” adds complexity to service encounter and employee perceptions.

A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 118 Chinese restaurant employees in the Soho area of the London Chinatown. Perception questions were based on interviews undertaken in an earlier phase of the research. A paired t-test was run to identify significant differences in the Chinese restaurant employees’ perceptions of the Chinese and British patrons. Discriminant analysis was performed to determine which perception variables discriminated the most between the two patron groups.

Despite cultural proximity, the perceptions held by Chinese restaurant employees of their nationals were negative compared to the perceptions of British patrons. Out of 16, in 15 areas of measurement, there were significant differences in the Chinese restaurant employees’ perceptions’ of their Chinese and British guests. Six variables that discriminated the most between the two groups of guests were no tips, not polite, loud, no compliment, messy and demanding.

Research in ethnic and minority quarters, such as Chinatown in London, may suffer from “recall bias”, or in this case from making the difference between customer groups. Also, the Chinese are not a homogeneous group. For example, despite cultural similarity with mainstream culture, cultural and behavioral characteristics may exist between residents from the South, North and Hong Kong.

The cultural diversity of the industry’s employees necessitates managing cultural diversity effectively, especially in the sectors that rely heavily on guest–employee interaction. Perceptions affect attitudes and behavior. Training programs about perception and its roots may bridge the service gap in high-contact service encounters.

This study provides a ground for future empirical research into understanding the immigrant employees’ perceptions of their guests, nationals versus non-nationals and the ways for improving these perceptions. Taking the example of Chinatown as a dynamic “third space” is another approach to understanding the effects of “ethnoscape” on encounters in a more globalized village.

Despite their popularity among tourists, information about low-cost accommodation is limited. The study aims to focus on hostels as tourist accommodation. The purpose of this paper is to document the perceptions of hostel front-desk employees about customers and examine employees’ perceptions from a cultural perspective. As culture moderates behavior in general, in light of the cultural difference postulate which proposes that guests and hosts who are from similar or proximate cultures are more likely to experience positive service encounter and that encounter between guests and hosts from distant cultures may be more challenging to service providers, the study compares the perceptions of hostel Western front-desk employees with those of Eastern front-desk employees of their customers. Customers are categorized into four groups – Western customers, Eastern, Middle Eastern/Arab and African. Exploratory interviews paved the development of perception items, which were later on used in a questionnaire to serve the study’s purpose. The paper has managerial and theoretical implications and offers suggestions for further research to advance understanding about this neglected tourism environment.

Preliminary/exploratory short interviews with hostel employees in London paved the development of perception items, which were later on used in a questionnaire. There are about 190 hostels in the London area. The questionnaire was self-administered and successfully completed by 113 front-desk employees working in London hostels. t-test statistics was used to examine whether the two groups of employees hold different perceptions about their culturally different group of customers.

Results indicate that, generally, differences in perception exist among hostel employees about their customer groups. For example, Western customers are perceived as nicer and more tip-givers than Eastern customers, but they also complain more and are more demanding than their counterparts. Asian customers are perceived to be friendlier, least troublesome and least demanding than the other customer groups. African customers are the least positively perceived. As for Middle Eastern (Arab) customers, they are perceived rather somewhat positively and yet the least favorite. Furthermore, no statistical differences were observed between Western employees and Eastern employees’ perceptions about their customer groups, except that the latter perceives Asian customers to be more troublesome and more complaining.

Although researchers have compared Western people’s behaviors and attitudes with those of Eastern people, differences may also exist within cultural groups, especially between East Europeans and West Europeans, between Middle Eastern and North Africans or between Americans and Canadians, despite cultural proximity. Therefore, it is always reasonable to interpret cultural differences studies cautiously.

Hostel management is advised not to take cultural proximity/distance between employees and customers for granted and, thus, should not assume that Eastern employees are more likely to provide better service to Eastern customers than Western employees or that Western employees are more likely to do so to Western customers because they are culturally similar or proximate. In an increasingly globalized world and mobile and culturally diverse workforce in the hospitality sector, it becomes necessary to raise employees’ awareness about cultural differences and their probable effects on perceptions. This is especially true for hostels because of their social characteristic.

Despite the importance of hostels to the tourism and hospitality industry, not much is known about their customers or their employees. In addition to contributing to employee perception in general, which is also a neglected area of study, this paper used cultural distance/proximity to assess differences in perception between Eastern employees and Western employees about four culturally different groups of hostel customers. In light of the impacts of globalization on consumer behavior, this paper joins other research to challenge the cultural distance postulate in the service encounter context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of Islamic beliefs and practices on leisure and travel behavior of Muslims in Clemson, South Carolina. With the increase of Muslims in the USA, from both conversion and immigration, it is important to examine the effects of their religion on leisure and travel behavior.

Using the grounded theory approach, semi-structured interviews with six Muslim men and six Muslim women of different nationalities were conducted in English in the local Mosque of Clemson, South Carolina, in the fall of 2011.

The results provide some evidence that Islamic beliefs and behavioral practices influence leisure and travel behavior of Muslims in the USA. The study identifies seven major themes that play an important role in determining leisure and travel behavior of Muslims in Clemson. These are the importance of mosques, traveling with a Mohram, Hijab and a dress code for men and women, drinking alcohol and being in places where alcohol is served, eating pork, Holy Month of Ramadan and Dabiha.

The study highlights the need for tourism marketers to pay more attention to the influence of religion on leisure and travel behavior of Muslim travelers.

The study provides the tourism industry with a better understanding of the importance of religion influences on the special needs of Muslim travelers and shows how the industry can better accommodate these needs.

The aim of this paper is to present a model in which the relationship between Muslims’ involvement with traveling to Islamic destinations and Islamic destination brand equity is investigated.

Based on the existing theoretical and empirical research on involvement and brand equity in tourism marketing and the literature on Muslim tourists’ needs and culture, a conceptual model for Muslim tourists is developed. The model investigates the relationships between Muslims’ psychological motivations for traveling to Islamic destinations and the evaluation of destination Islamic brand.

The study shows that the more Muslims are involved in traveling to Islamic destinations, the more likely they evaluate the key dimensions of destination Islamic brand. This is demonstrated by the influence of Muslims’ involvement on their awareness of Islamic destinations, their image of the Islamic destination attributes, the perceived quality of Islamic offerings, the perceived Islamic value and their loyalty toward Islamic destinations.

The study evaluates the Islamic brand equity in the context of Islamic tourism destinations and in relation to Muslims’ interests in traveling to Islamic countries. The study contributes to better understand the Islamic destinations and how to maximize the benefits of their Islamic attributes. It is suggested that Islamic attributes should be highlighted more for Muslim tourists interested in traveling to Islamic countries. Investigating the concepts analyzed will help tourism destinations to integrate marketing and promotional campaigns and build a more powerful Islamic brand in Muslim markets.

The relationship between involvement and brand equity has not been yet explored adequately, especially in the context of Islamic branding. This study adds to the previous studies in which the link between personal involvement with a specific destination and destination brand equity was explored. The role of Islamic values in this relationship is highlighted. The study contributes to destination branding studies by being one of the primary works, which applies the concept of brand equity to Islamic destinations.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of travel motivation, Muslim-friendly amenities and lifestyle, cognitive and affective destination image and quality of service on Kuwaiti travelers’ intentions to visit Islamic tourism destinations.

A self-administered questionnaire consisting of multiple-item scales was developed. A convenience sample of 224 Kuwaitis was surveyed. The hierarchical regression analysis tested whether and how much the influencing factors predicted a significant amount of the variance in travel. The analysis was controlled for the effects of demographic variables.

Travel motivation and cognitive and affective image had the largest significant effects on the Kuwaiti travelers’ intention to visit Islamic destinations. Contrary to expectations, the findings suggested that Muslim-friendly amenities and quality of service did not affect Kuwaitis’ travel decisions.

This study provides a starting point for future empirical research into Islamic tourism in the Middle East. It provides an understanding of the importance of travel motivation and destination image in attracting Kuwaiti travelers to Islamic destinations.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for understanding issues affecting Egyptian online travel website preferences.

Grounded theory was selected due to its suitability in generating frameworks from data gathered plus existing theory.

The research describes the development of the electronic cultural adaptation framework (E-CAF), which consists of six theoretical dimensions that allow both researchers and practitioners to comprehend how Egyptian cultural values can affect their online travel shopping behaviour, in particular website design preferences.

The construction of the E-CAF is based on research into Egyptian online travel consumers. Development of the E-CAF could be expanded using participants from different cultural groups and other shopping domains.

This research will help practitioners to understand how Egyptian cultural values can affect online behaviour and assist in developing strategies for local adaptations of online travel offerings. The framework will also provide web designers with guidelines for gathering and developing requirements from clients to implement culturally adaptive web interfaces for Egyptian consumers.

While there are a number of existing cultural frameworks in existence, such as those of Hofstede, Hall, or Schwartz, these frameworks are not based on consumer behaviour, either online or offline, and are, therefore, not optimally suited for use in online marketing strategies or web design for Egyptian consumers. This research overcomes these limitations by providing a framework that recognises how cultural values can impact Egyptian consumer behaviour and provides a platform for further research, as well as online marketing strategies and tactics.

This paper aims to explore how destination image can be shaped, created and crafted, from an induced-source, supply-side perspective to better cater to Arab visitors, drawing on empirical research conducted on the Gold Coast, Australia.

Two sequential stages of research were implemented. The first stage conducted an analysis of websites to compare and contrast the image of the Gold Coast projected with the image perceived by Arab visitors. The second stage conducted semi-structured interviews with professionals from two destination marketing organisations (DMOs) directly responsible for marketing the Gold Coast to Arab visitors.

Key findings indicate that the DMOs sought to portray a strong destination brand to Arab visitors, specifically around its current branding of “Gold Coast: Famous for Fun”. The Gold Coast has highly evolved strategies to target Arab visitors, including productive working relationships between DMOs and strategic partnerships with tourism organisations in the Arab world. However, analysis of websites revealed some incongruence between core attractions. Arab websites emphasise the beach more than do the Australian, state and local DMOs, and entertainment did not rate as highly as the need for beaches, shopping and accommodation.

Importantly, this research highlights the need for DMOs to clearly understand the needs of Arab visitors and integrating such information into targeted marketing campaigns aligned with the core destination brand.

The contribution of this research is in providing a more nuanced understanding of the importance of using culture as a key segmentation tool not only to help attract more tourists but to assist DMOs to understand the special needs of various cultures in the destination.