Cross-cultural differences in tourism: Indonesian tourists in Australia

Abstract

Indonesia is one of the largest Asian markets generating tourists to Australia. Currently, the Australian tourism industry is faced with an increasing number of inbound travellers with different cultural backgrounds. Consequently, greater cross-cultural awareness, understanding and acceptance of cultural differences is needed by tourism practitioners. The paper broadly examines the cultural differences between the Indonesian and Australian populations in a tourism context, and recommends that such cultural understanding should be the basis of employee training in appropriate sectors of the tourism industry.