Global Expectations, Local Realities: All-Inclusive Hotel Reviews and Responses on TripAdvisor

Abstract

Abstract In this article we examine online reviews and hotel responses of Spanish hotel chains in two overseas tourist destinations: the Caribbean and Mexico. Drawing on a dataset of 96 hotel reviews we examine the intercultural experience of travellers as mediated by direct or indirect prior knowledge of the tourist destination and subsequent knowledge that results from visiting the host country and interacting with the locals, primarily with resort staff. The analysis shows, on the one hand, the global stance taken by the travellers to construct their reviews where the creation of an “intercultural space” is typically resisted and challenged in favour of expected global standards. The hotels’ responses, on the other hand, are constructed from a local rather than a global perspective. Findings reveal the intercultural tension that arises when lived experience of the specific culture cannot be married with the expectancies of homogeneity created by an increasingly globalised experience of tourism. The article concludes with a discussion of the role of interculturality, as conceived of in pragmatics, in a contemporary era characterised by discontent with digital information systems. It includes a discussion of some of the challenges in deploying the contrastive pragmatics toolkit to capture the intercultural space reported here and the extent to which it allows us to portray interculturality in the present day.