International bilateral business in the tourism industry: perspectives from German–Moroccan co-operations

Abstract

This paper reports on an exploratory programme of research into the bilateral relations between German and Moroccan tourism businesses. Recently, Morocco embarked on an ambitious programme of tourism reform as part of a wider scheme of social and economic change. While greater contact between Moroccan and external businesses is desired, there is little understanding of how these relationships function and, hence, their ability to impact upon the outcomes of the reform programme. This paper employs concepts of inter-cultural contact, communication, competence and conflict resolution developed in linguistics and international management to explore the bilateral relationships between German and Moroccan businesses. Culture-free and culture-bound paradigms underpin different perceptions of inter-culturality for strategies for the management of inter-cultural contact. Empirical evidence suggests that there is a mismatch between the paradigms adopted by German and Moroccan businesses, respectively. This leads to conflict. Approaches and tactics for conflict resolution are similar on both sides. Tourism strategies that desire or require inter-cultural business contact should be informed by the approaches of international management among indigenous and external tourism businesses.