Thailand, the land of smile? Evaluation of the Thai culture and its effects and opportunities for the Airline Business

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Communications - Intercultural Communication, grade: 2,0, University of Applied Sciences Wildau (Institute of Technology), course: Cross cultural communication, language: English, abstract: Travel agencies call Thailand the ¿land of smile¿ in order to attract tourists. But also companies might find this ¿smiling¿ mentality interesting and could benefit from it. In 2050 two-third of all people will live in Asia and most companies are looking for new production or sales markets. This paper will evaluate cultural reasons for the saying ¿land of smile¿ and its effects. Besides online and book sources, personal experiences from business and leisure visits in Thailand will form the basis of the discussion. How should people and companies behave in Thailand in order to be most satisfied and successful? This is one of the key questions which will be discussed by taking the aviation industry (¿Thai Smile¿ Airline) as an example. The following essay will first give an overview about Thailand¿s history and today¿s economic and social specifications. Afterwards theoretic input will be used to link the historic development of the Thai culture to models like Hofstede¿s dimensions. The main part will then be the effects and opportunities from the discussed culture for e.g. aviation companies.