What is international etiquette?

As a travel and event agency, our experience is that understanding and accommodating cultural differences is absolutely vital to our clients and therefore to the success of our projects and ultimately to our agency.

We’ve worked in over 53 different countries world-wide including China, India, Turkey, Azerbaijan, South Africa, South America and across Europe – and as such have been involved in many and various conversations regarding culture / cultural sensitivities and how we will accommodate them.

As part of our clients’ briefs we are also very often tasked with ensuring that our working methodology encompasses cultural differences and includes locally sourced products, services and labour. So for example, we’ve operated in countries where we’ve worked with local companies and have arranged prayer rooms to be set up for our crew’s use; where we’ve had to arrange catering with care as the event falls in the month of Ramadan and some of our crew are observing Ramadan and some are not.

We’ve also had to sensitively deal with the issue of alcohol being drunk onsite by local crews when our client has a strict no alcohol consumption policy. This is as much an HSSE issue as it is a cultural one and we have had to deal with it from both angles accordingly.

As an organisation we love working abroad and with different cultures and we ensure that the solutions we come up with become truly integrated within each project. Each new challenge helps us to develop as an organisation and increases our knowledge and operating skill.

Our experience is that if you engage with people and are open and honest about what you do and don’t know, firstly people know you’re serious about ensuring cultural sensitivities are observed and secondly, they are happy that you are taking a genuine interest in their country and their culture. This has only ever been a positive for us and has helped us to build long standing and mutually respectful relationships with organisations around the world. This in turn has meant that, as an agency, we have great stretch and a competitive edge that few other agencies of our size could boast about. …And let’s not forget that there may be cultural issues from the incoming group too which need to be comfortably accommodated by the host country. So it is never a one way street!

If you would like to know more about the work done in the Agency, please contact: Rachel Hargrave, Director, The Phoenix Partners
Tel: 01509 815026 - www.thephoenixpartners.com