Rethinking cultural personalization in multicultural hospitality: A mixed-methods study from Istanbul’s hotel sector

Abstract

In an era of growing cultural diversity in global tourism, the need for culturally responsive hospitality services has become more pressing than ever. This study illustrates how internal service mechanisms among them staff training affect perceptions of cultural personalization by international guests in Istanbul's hotel industry. In a sequential mixed-methods design, the qualitative phase consisted of semi-structured interviews with hotel managers, leading to five thematic dimensions of cultural responsiveness being surfaced. These results served to develop a structured questionnaire that was distributed to126 international guests, whose responses were subsequently analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicated that training is a significant predictor of both guest satisfaction (β = 0.427, p < 0.001) and guest experience (β = 0.287, p < 0.001), which in turn partially mediate the effect on perceived cultural personalization. The final model was found to have good reliability and explanatory power (R² = 0.62). Findings suggest the counterintuitively reversed pathway whereby internal service quality shapes guests' perception of personalization, which is contrary to traditional linear models. This study provides a theoretical contribution to cross-cultural service design and offers practical suggestions for hospitality managers to encourage their industry toward inclusiveness and an emotional connection with guests in multicultural environments.