Expatriate managers working in international luxury hotels in China: analysis of challenges and opportunities, with a lexicographic collection

Abstract

This paper analyses the current environment, the roles, the opportunities, the obstacles and the challenging situations that expatriate managers face living in China. Since 1978-80, China opened its doors to the external world and the hotel industry was one of the first business which started to look abroad and be opened to the outside reality. The first chapter of this paper presents a generic view of the Chinese hospitality industry, zooming-in on the first international tourism boom which initiated the diffusion of international hotels and their gradual expansion in the Chinese market. This content is important to introduce the topic of the second chapter - expatriate hotel managers in China. The first presence of expats working in Chinese hotels, the reasons why international companies seek foreign managers, the opportunities offered to them highlight the importance of training and motivation to support expats. The third chapter describes the several difficulties that expatriate managers have to deal with while working in this business. I will analyze the cultural shock that characterized expatriates’ experiences in China especially focusing on the concept of “guanxi” and how it creates such a conspicuous obstacle for expatriates. Afterwards, I will move to the concept of “mianzi” - a particularly important topic in the Chinese culture and business etiquette. Finally, I will investigate how employees’ turnover impacts expatriates’ experiences and what leads them to fail on their job. The second section of this paper is a lexicographic collection of terms. Each term is provided with a definition, the concept field it belongs to and the potential correlation between the term in the three different languages used. I conclude the paper with an Italian- English- Chinese (with characters and pinyin) glossary.