Vietnam attracts visitors from various source markets and such diversity has become commonplace in major tourism receiving areas. The practice of international tourism generally implies cross-cultural experiences on the part of both tourists and service providers. Given the marked differences between the cultures of Asian and Western travelers, and since Asian cultures are heterogeneous, an understanding of the impact of rules of behaviour between international travelers from different cultural backgrounds will be critical for the effective operation of tourism in Vietnam. This book investigates the major cultural differences between Vietnamese hosts and Chinese, French and American travelers that impinge upon host-guest social and cultural interactions. Within the tourism literature, markets have been divided on the basis of psychographics, geographic and behavioural characteristics. Amongst these methods, the common ones are nationality, benefits sought, tourist role and social class, with nationality and rules of social interaction (or rules of behaviour) being the most important segmentation variables to be included. This book has both practical and academic significance. Drawing upon the marketing, tourism, and cultural studies literature and examining cultural values in tourism settings, the research presented in this book provides some strategic directions for tourism managers and marketers. From a theoretical perspective, this book provides an enriched understanding of Rokeach's and Argyle's models. These instruments have previously been applied in the fields of sociology, psychology, and marketing. In the present case, these models are used with some modifications to measure the cross-cultural service interactions and the associated insights that are useful for tourism researchers, developers, marketers, and managers. This book is evidence based and can serve as a guide to meet the needs of Asian and Western tourists with particular reference to the important influence of cultural backgrounds and rules of behaviour on touristhost service interactions in cross-cultural settings. It applies the empirically based models to development-related challenges confronting the tourism sector.

With a history of attracting French tourists since the 19th century and particularly during the colonial period, Vietnam has re-emerged as one of the most popular Asian destinations for the French. A number of factors augur well for a further increase in visitation. As a former colony, Vietnam has nostalgic appeal for many French visitors. After the release of the films L' lndochine, L 'amant, Le Cyclo, Papaye Vert, and the documentary-drama Dien Bien Phu in 1993, France became the main tourism source market for Vietnam. As the ethnic composition of France has changed, the French are interested in learning about cultures generally and Asian cultures, in particular. The prospect of discovering new destinations and cultures encourages them to travel long-haul. They are quality conscious and culture loving, and prefer to use their own language when traveling overseas, favouring their own cuisine even though they do enjoy the cuisine of the host countries .Travel to Vietnam offers the prospect of fulfilling a number of their preferences. Another attraction for French tourists is that Vietnam is a member of the Francophone Community. Since 1988, the French legacy has experienced a resurgence with the renovation of colonial-style properties and restaurants. Tourists have been impressed by the French-style architecture, accommodation and cuisine that is available. Despite Vietnam's long history of contact with France, Vietnamese service providers are relatively ignorant about Western countries, their people and their values. Up to now Vietnam's tourism authorities have paid little attention to the role of cultural understanding in the tourism development process and Vietnam's overseas tourism promotions have given minimal acknowledgement of the cultural characteristics of source markets including those conducted in France. Servicing French tourists is likely to be a challenge for Vietnamese service providers because of the substantial differences between the respective host and guest cultures and rules of behaviour. International tourism generally involves a cross-cultural component, particularly in the case of encounters between tourists and service providers. If it is accepted that the cultural values of Western travellers are different, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Vietnamese service providers need to consider the effect of this cultural dissimilarity on touristahost mutual perceptions and social interaction in the intercultural service encounters. An understanding of areas of potential tourist dissatisfaction may assist the service providers to anticipate prospective negative perceptions and to address them, thereby contributing to overall holiday satisfaction, and improve the prospects of repeat visitation. It is common for destinations to attract visitation from different source countries and cultures. Nonetheless, consumer behaviour literature on cross-cultural perceptions and interaction have been largely limited to homogeneous sample populations from Western countries. Furthermore, until now there are no published studies have specifically examined touristahost service encounters interaction and mutual perceptions in the context of Vietnam as a holiday destination. Consequently, this research has both practical and academic significances. From the theoretical perspectives, this study provides an augmented comprehension on Argyle's, Rokeach and SERVQUAL models. From the practical standpoints, this study offers service managers and marketers a heightened understanding of cross-cultural awareness for improving customer satisfaction. It acclaims an evidence base that can guide provision to meet the needs of international tourists with particular reference to the impact of rules of behaviour on touristahost service encounters interaction. It accentuates the effect of cultural backgrounds on tourists' perceptions towards and satisfaction with service quality. By this means, it applies the empirically based models to development related challenges confronting the tourism sector in the cross-cultural settings for designing appropriate strategies with the aim of gaining a competitive advantage. Keywords: French Guests, Vietnamese Hosts, Cultural Values, Rules of Behaviour, Interactions, Satisfaction, Service Attributes and Performances.

This book focuses on the Australian occidental tourists' expectations and satisfaction in one of the oriental tourist destinations such as Vietnam. It makes use the HOLSAT model to assess the holiday satisfaction of Australian travellers to Vietnam, and it is the second known application of this model. It seriously looks at the capabilities of the existing theoretical models to assess the tourist expectations and satisfaction and highlight the importance of the HOLSTAT model in understanding explicitly the differences between Expectation and Experience. An examination of various sample segments has tested the effectiveness of the HOLSAT model. Gender and the mode of travel were investigated and have determined the differences amongst various segments of Australian tourists who visited Vietnam. This aspect of using the HOLSAT model to study segmentation was differed from the one undertaken by Tribe and Snaith (1998). From a theoretical point of view, the findings from this study have demonstrated the workability of the HOLSAT model as a useful instrument for measuring holiday satisfaction and also for segmenting tourist market. The HOLSAT model has great potential because it does not require a fixed menu of attributes, generic to all destinations, compared with some other satisfaction models that seek to apply the same attributes to different situations. From a practical approach, this book also looks at the destination marketing implications for the results obtained through the administration of normal parametric measures. This is an important feature of the research findings since it helps the tourism industry at large to design products and services that suit myriad segments of the international, national and regional tourism markets.

The application of market segmentation techniques is long established in the tourism and hospitality literature. Various methods have been proposed for dividing market segments into homogeneous or distinct groupings with regard to socio-demographic, travel characteristic, psychographic, geographic and behavioural characteristics. In the present study, nationality (cultural differences) in combination with visitor demographics and travel characteristics were used to investigate the similarities and differences of international tourists from China and the USA with regards to their perception towards the Vietnamese service provider's attributes and performances. The results have shown that there are more differences than similarities between the two samples in terms of cultural values and perceptions.