Tourism: an intergroup communication model with Russian inflections

Abstract

Tourism is big business globally, as witnessed by the World Tourism Organization's estimation that there were more than a billion tourists in 2012. Surprisingly, the fields of intergroup and intercultural communication have, as yet, only spawned a few studies on understanding host–tourist language practices. Drawing on communication accommodation theory (with reflections on touristic experiences in St. Petersburg), a model is proposed not only for understanding past research on tourist–host communication, but also as a blueprint for guiding future research of this genre in Russia.