Comparative Analysis On The Cross-cultural Communication Between China And America In Tourism

In China, more and more American tourists flock to China for a visit with thedevelopment of economic globalization and cultural integration. This phenomenonhas brought new opportunities and challenges to Chinese tourism industry. Thebooming tourism generates the demand for communications between Chinese andAmerican people. Under such circumstances, many researchers on the study ofintercultural communication have been carried out in order to overcome the languagebarriers obstructing successful intercultural communication and to promote successfulcommunication between people from different cultures.The author adopts qualitative approach and quantitative approach in this thesis tostudy the cultural differences between China and the United States in tourism duringthe process of intercultural communication. On the one hand, the author has collectedsome relevant books, journals, newspapers as well as materials on the Internet forqualitative research. On the other hand, the author has prepared100copies of thesame questionnaire for quantitative research.50questionnaires were distributed to50Chinese people, while the other50questionnaires were issued to Americans. Thequestions listed on the questionnaires include: what kind of destination the touristswould choose to visit, whether they tend to visit adventurous places and whether theyhave the awareness of individual performance. Then, the author contrasts andanalyzes the feedbacks of the two groups of people, and has found that the there arecultural differences between Chinese and American tourists in terms of tourism motivation, attitudes and behaviors. The author searches for the source and finallyfound the factors leading to these cultural differences by comparison and analysis of avariety of literature. These factors include the geographical environment, history,writing systems, life and production methods, and systems of philosophy, politics andeconomy. Later, the author analyzes the impacts of these cultural differences andproposes countermeasures to deal with the problems caused by cultural differences inintercultural tourism.Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to study the differences between Chineseand American tourists in ideas, motivations and behavior and so on, and points outthat the root of the differences lies in the viewpoints of collectivism and individualismin tourists’ minds, as well as their historical and economical differences. This paperconsists of five parts. In the first chapter, the necessity and the purpose of this studyare presented. In the second chapter, a literature review is given, which lists out andsummarizes the previous researches; the third chapter gives the theoreticalfoundations of this study and searching approaches of this thesis. The main part ofthis thesis is the fourth chapter, in which the author discussed the manifestations ofcultural differences between China and America in tourism, the origin of the culturaldifferences existing in tourism, impacts of cultural differences on Chinese tourismindustry and recommendations for the tourism industry. Chapter five is the conclusionpart.