The importance of cultural training in the hospitality sector

Abstract

The human element is the most influential resource and the one that has the greatest responsibility on the organizations' effectiveness and efficiency. (Milkovich and Boudreau, 2004). Therefore, the development of human resources and their training is fundamental to achieve the organizational goals (Banerjee, 2016; Chand, 2016). Globalization facilitates the mobility of people around the world, increasing the number and diversity of tourists in hotels (Gao, Li, Liu and Fang, 2018) from different cultures, bringing with them different perceptions of the quality of services ( Schckert, Liu and Law, 2015). This new reality became a challenge for human resources management practices, and specifically in one of its key areas, which is training (Singh, 2018). Studies show that training has a positive impact on skills development and worker performance (Otoo and Mishra, 2018). After the diagnosis of the situation regarding the training programs of hotel professionals, in terms of contents and methods, we found a gap, since cultural training is not usually part of these training programs (Gamio and Sneed, 1991). Thus, we end this paper by presenting a more comprehensive training proposal that takes cultural values into account, as well as their impact on the interaction of these professionals with clients.