The Relationship between Hotel Employees’ Backgrounds and Intercultural Communicative Competence Level: A Case Study of Hotel Front Office Personnel in Bangkok

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between the educational and work experience backgrounds of frontline hotel workers in Bangkok and their level of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). The intercultural competence framework from Barrett et al. (2013), which included an exploration of the ICC domains — attitudes, knowledge and understanding, skills and actions — all essential areas for interculturally competent speakers, was adopted as a guideline in the study. Added to the ICC domains, Byram’s (1997) framework is an objective-based ICC approach to be operationalized as a guideline for the design of the ICC self-perception questionnaire. The participants for this study included 219 hotel front office employees randomly selected from three- and four-star hotels in Bangkok. The results of the study revealed that there was no relationship between participants’ backgrounds and their intercultural competency level. The outcomes may provide useful guidelines for hotel human resources management to inform the future content of intercultural communication training courses. Also, the findings can be valuable for educational institutions to help enhance the ICC development of their graduates. Finally, the outcomes are an informational base for future research.