This paper examines opportunities to improve cross-cultural and cultural-awareness training at Hilton Hotels International, Inc., a global hospitality leader operating in 78 countries across six continents. Beginning with a company introduction and SWOT analysis, the study evaluates Hilton's internal strengths and external threats before identifying the world's most widely spoken languages and their implications for employee training. The paper then addresses international cross-cultural issues, drawing on hospitality management literature to argue that sustained, structured training is essential for effective guest service. A discussion chapter evaluates available language-learning tools — including Rosetta Stone and in-house approaches — and concludes with recommendations for an integrated, top-down training strategy that leverages the company's existing human resource expertise.
The overarching purpose of this study is to identify opportunities to improve the cross-cultural and cultural-awareness training at Hilton Hotels International, Inc. in order to help achieve the company's stated goal of exceeding guests' expectations in every way. This goal supports Hilton Hotels International's plans to grow its business through continued expansion into new international markets where it already dominates in many regions. Hilton Hotels International, Inc. (hereinafter alternatively "Hilton" or "the company") is a Delaware corporation that competes in the global hospitality industry (Goodwin-Gill & Talmon, 1999). The company has more hotels around the world than any other competitor. According to Hilton's corporate website, "Today, Hilton welcomes guests in more countries than any other full-service hotel brand, with more than 540 hotels and resorts in 78 countries across six continents" (About Hilton, 2012). These numbers do not reflect the total number of hotels in the Hilton brand hotel chains.
In order to achieve this level of success, the company has implemented performance management systems with proven track records as well as informed human resource management processes that follow best industry practices. According to Duboff and Spaeth (2000), "Hilton Hotels came out of the terrible recession that rocked the hospitality industry in the 1990s to forge a new, aggressive growth strategy that more effectively leveraged the Hilton brand while at the same time reengineering business practices to regain a leadership position" (p. 81). Following the business maxim that in order to improve something it must first be measured, the company adopted a proven method for this purpose. Duboff and Spaeth add that "to put the new corporate strategy into practice, Hilton aligned its processes, people, and technology using the balanced scorecard approach" (p. 81). Given the company's far-flung global business operations, the use of the balanced scorecard was highly congruent with the company's needs. According to Duboff and Spaeth, "[The balanced scorecard's] quantitative and nonquantitative measures give the company a snapshot of the critical factors that create value for all its constituencies — customers, team members, owners/shareholders, strategic partners/vendors, and communities in which its properties are located" (p. 81).
In addition, the company has forged strategic partnerships and alliances within and beyond the travel and tourism industry and has taken advantage of innovative marketing opportunities offered by social media networks such as Facebook, where it maintains a prominent presence. The company continues to expand its international offerings year by year and expects to add several new hotels every week for the next several years (About Hilton, 2012). In total, the company already has more than 636,931 rooms in 3,866 hotels around the world, and one in every six hotel rooms currently under construction in Europe belongs to a Hilton-branded hotel chain (Hilton Worldwide at a Glance, 2012).
Despite ongoing expansions and world-class service, Hilton has remained challenged by a number of problems in recent years. Duboff and Spaeth emphasize that "a well-known brand name isn't enough. There has to be value behind the name, which is the problem that Hilton Hotels faced in the early 1990s" (p. 125). In response, the company launched a series of management reforms designed to improve customer service and elevate the Hilton brand to its once-prominent position in the hospitality industry. According to Duboff and Spaeth (2000), during the late 1990s "Hilton Hotels adopted an aggressive growth strategy, one designed to leverage the Hilton brand while reengineering business practices to gain a leadership position in the hospitality industry. The Hilton initiative was built on ensuring substance behind the brand perception" (p. 125). The reengineering process involved a comprehensive evaluation of all company hotels, used to identify opportunities for improvement, including the need for improved customer service at many locations and branded alternatives (Duboff & Spaeth, 2000).
The company's current branded hotel chains include the following categories and brands. In the luxury segment: Waldorf Astoria ("the luxury brand offering a unique service experience and the world's landmark hotels") and Conrad ("a world of style, service, and connection for today's sophisticated traveler"). In the full-service segment: Hilton Hotels and Resorts (the company's flagship brand, with more than 540 hotels and resorts in more than 78 countries across six continents), DoubleTree (offering genuine comfort to business and leisure travelers in over 250 locations), and Embassy Suites (a superior all-suite lodging value for both business and pleasure). In the focused-service segment: Hilton Garden Inn (upscale, affordable hotels engineered for value and comfort), Hampton (moderately priced hotels delivering consistent quality, value, and service), Homewood Suites (casual, affordable all-suite properties), and Home2 (the company's new, stylish all-suite brand of extended-stay hotels) (Hilton Brands, 2012).
The company has also launched an ambitious expansion program throughout the Middle East — especially Saudi Arabia, where it maintains some of its most luxurious accommodations (Keating, 2006) — as well as throughout major markets in Asia and Africa (Hilton Worldwide at a Glance, 2012). The company operates thousands of hotels on six different continents, an issue that requires a careful analysis of its operating environment to better understand its customer service needs.
According to Cravens (2000), the main purpose of a SWOT analysis is to identify key issues that can provide business managers and investors with an informed view of the enterprise. In general, the SWOT analysis attempts to identify the respective strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to the enterprise's operating environment. Strengths are the positive aspects that are internal to the enterprise, while weaknesses are those negative aspects that are also internal. Opportunities are positive aspects that are external to the enterprise, and threats are regarded as negative aspects that are external (Cravens, 2000).
Applying the SWOT framework to Hilton's current situation reveals the following. Among the company's strengths: it has recognized the constraints to providing consistent, world-class customer service and has taken aggressive steps to address them (Duboff & Spaeth, 2000); it has leveraged several global brands in innovative ways to capture new market share in mid-range and near-budget hotel markets while also expanding in the luxury sector (Thompson, 2001); it possesses a sophisticated supply chain network and the IT infrastructure needed to support it (Duboff & Spaeth, 2000); it has a dedicated and experienced executive leadership team that supports necessary change; it possesses an enormous talent pool of language speakers from around the world that could be used to develop in-house language training resources and to provide empirical observations on salient cross-cultural issues; and it has a well-matured balanced scorecard performance management system in place that can help identify opportunities for improvement.
Among the company's weaknesses: despite ongoing efforts to provide relevant cross-cultural awareness training, there remains a need for more effective methods to ensure optimal use of scarce HR training resources; some rigid hierarchical levels and a well-entrenched middle-management bureaucracy tend to impede company-wide cultural-awareness and cross-cultural training initiatives; and there is a lack of coordination and alignment between Hilton's IT support services and end-users.
The company's key opportunities include a growing middle class and upper-middle class in emerging nations — especially China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia — all representing potential new customer bases. Innovations in human resource training approaches have also created an opportunity to apply new methods to the company's cultural-awareness and cross-cultural training requirements (Hampel & Hauck, 2004), including decisions about which languages should receive special focus.
The company faces several threats: skyrocketing fuel prices are driving airline ticket prices up, causing many consumers to postpone or cancel international travel plans (Seymour, 2010); ongoing threats of international terrorism continue to plague the aviation, travel, and tourism industries (Moss, Ryan & Moss, 2007); regionalized violence may cause travelers to become victims and reduce future demand (Tarlow, 2003); and increased security measures at airports may lead some consumers to reconsider international travel for pleasure (Minert, 2006; Dotson, Clark & Dave, 2008). Furthermore, these same threats may diminish international business travel when readily available alternatives exist, such as teleconferencing (Bradley, 2003; Mackay, 2007), online forums (Pemberton, Cereijo, Tyler-Wood & Rademacher, 2004), or other emerging technologies that can replace the need for face-to-face meetings (Goldstein, Mowry & Campbell, 2009).
As the above analysis makes clear, there is a great deal of overlap between many of the SWOT areas, with threats in one area representing corresponding opportunities in others, and vice versa. For instance, if the company is experiencing a decline in room occupancy rates in a given international destination market, it could respond by promoting its domestic marketing offerings in ways that could provide new customers and positive results such as repeat business in other venues (Wahab & Cooper, 2001). Likewise, growth in new emerging markets would introduce additional cross-cultural and cultural-awareness needs for company executives and employees alike, making the need for a standardized but flexible approach to training a timely and important enterprise. Part of this enterprise involves identifying which languages should receive special attention, and these issues are discussed further below.
Companies competing in the international hospitality industry are faced with a polyglot of languages and dialects among their clientele (Jayawardena, 2002), and with corporate operations in 78 countries on six continents, Hilton is certainly no exception. The company's operations include the major industrialized nations of the world, as well as many emerging countries, particularly in the Middle East and Asia, with China leading the way. At present, the world's most widely spoken language is Mandarin Chinese with more than a billion native speakers; Spanish is the second most widely spoken language with nearly 330 million speakers, followed by English with slightly more than 320 million speakers (Most Widely Spoken Languages, 2012).
A breakdown of the world's most widely spoken languages by total number of speakers (including all speakers, not just native speakers) is as follows: (1) Chinese (Mandarin) — 1,213,000,000; (2) Spanish — 329,000,000; (3) English — 328,000,000; (4) Arabic — 221,000,000; (5) Hindi — 182,000,000; (6) Bengali — 181,000,000; (7) Portuguese — 178,000,000; (8) Russian — 144,000,000; (9) Japanese — 122,000,000; (10) German — 90,000,000 (Most Widely Spoken Languages, 2012).
This breakdown indicates that Hilton's language requirements encompass all of the world's languages, with the most frequently used being Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, English, Arabic, and Hindi, in that order. Although no universal lingua franca exists, the four or five most widely spoken languages would represent the majority of Hilton's guests each year. It is also reasonable to assume that guests from virtually every country in the world stay at a Hilton-branded hotel at some point during a given year. Understanding what languages are spoken and having a working knowledge of them can be an indispensable asset for executives and front-line employees in the hotel industry. In this regard, Harrison (1999) emphasizes that "in order to be competent in cross-cultural situations, an appreciation of general and specific cultural differences is not enough: specific knowledge of the language used in the host culture also is essential" (p. 17).
While English has become a virtual lingua franca in many parts of the world — it is used in international airline operations, for instance — and serves as a major international business language, it is important to keep in mind that not all hotel guests in any region will speak a single language, and that a single language will not cover all communications in cross-cultural settings (Harrison, 1999). As Harrison points out, "an overwhelming majority of the world's population neither understands nor speaks English, and for most of those who learn it as a foreign language, it remains precisely that" (p. 18). Not surprisingly, there are profound cross-cultural differences that accompany these language differences among guests, executives, and employees alike.
"Cross-cultural conflict and training urgency"
"Language tool evaluation and HR recommendations"
The research showed that Hilton Hotels International, Inc. is the leading competitor in the global hotel industry, and many travelers have likely stayed at one of its branded hotel chains without realizing the parent company's identity. Today, the company has more than 600,000 rooms in nearly 4,000 hotels around the world and continues to expand its operations in all of its markets. The company is a leader in many of the markets in which it competes and has taken aggressive steps to promote its global brand in recent years. The SWOT analysis of Hilton's internal and external operating environment identified a number of strengths that the company can build on, provided it is able to leverage its brand in ways that overcome the threats arrayed against it.
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