Cultural Differences between Asian Tourist Markets and Australian Hosts, Part 1

This article analyzes five language groups of Asian tourists to Australia: Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Thai. The cultural differences between Asian tourists and Australian service providers are identified. The dimensions of the identified differences are determined by principal components analysis. The results indicate that in 73 (62.4%) of 117 areas of measurement, there are significant differences between Asian and Australian samples. The Japanese are the most distinct from the Australian sample, followed by the Korean sample. The implications of the results for tourism industry managers and marketers are discussed prior to the causal analysis of satisfaction presented in part 2, which shows that marketers cannot rely on perceptions of service alone to generate Asian tourist satisfaction but must also consider specific cultural values and rules of social behavior. Part 2 will appear in the May 2002 issue.