Target your business strategies to fit specific tourist cultures! Since Thomas Cook packaged the first tour in 1841, hospitality and tourism enterprises have forged long-term alliances with one another. Yet research suggests that most such alliances will fail. What goes wrong? How can tourism professionals take advantage of all the benefits of international cooperation while minimizing the potentially disastrous risks of failure? Global Alliances in Tourism and Hospitality Management provides empirical research, case studies, and theory to help you make the right decisions about this potentially high-profit strategy. To compete in the world travel market, a firm must increase its ability to reach, serve, and satisfy its target markets, while lowering costs. Making an alliance is often the most efficient and effective way to reach these twin goals. However, many firms make alliances without sufficient planning and end up paying the price in failed tours, dissatisfied customers, and damaged reputation. The five critical questions that must be answered before creating a partnership include: Do we want to partner? Do we have an ability to partner? With whom do we partner? How do we partner? How do we sustain and renew a partnership over time? Global Alliances in Tourism and Hospitality Management offers specific, detailed ideas and research on vital topics, including: deciding how and when to form alliances handling multicultural management issues identifying the basic elements of successful--and not so successful--partnerships discovering the effects of culture on purchasing decisions dealing with conflicts within alliances ensuring cross-agency cooperation The development and management of alliances is a critical skill. Global Alliances in Tourism and Hospitality Management provides you with the strategies you need to build successful alliances. International in scope, this informative guide will help marketers, managers, and other professionals in the hospitality industry to lower company costs, raise profits, and gain strategic advantages in diversified markets.