The Effect of Socio-Cultural Adaptation on Employee Satisfaction in Tourism

Abstract

Tourism is a very comprehensive sector that incorporates the workforce from different cultures. People from different countries and cultures create a multicultural work environment. Employees, who bring their own culture together, have to keep up with both the business environment and the social environment. Therefore, it is important to determine their sociocultural adaptation levels, which means that employees adapt to a new cultural environment. Employee satisfaction is important in terms of achieving service quality in the service sector and providing customer satisfaction accordingly. Achieving employee satisfaction depends on satisfying employees by increasing the motivation of them. The number of studies on the sociocultural adaptation of the employees in tourism sector is very limited. From this point of view, the main aim of this research is to reveal the effect of the socio-cultural adaptation levels of domestic and foreign employees working in tourism businesses on employee satisfaction. In the study, 467 employees working in hotels, travel agencies, food and beverag ecompanies and other tourism enterprises in Antalya province were conducted a questionnaire. As a result of the analyzes, the effect of socio-cultural adaptation on employee satisfaction was found to be negative and statistically significant. Accordingly, employee satisfaction decreases as sociocultural adaptation levels increase.