Advise participants to turn to page 40 in their workbooks

The following structured controversies arise when tourists or guests visit a host culture. Each cross-cultural issue presented here is based on a real scenario with the names left out. Encourage participants to come up with their own ideas to debate.

In groups of 6-20 participants, choose your issue from the following: safety, beliefs, health, legal or moral. Each group will then subdivide into two smaller groups of 3-5 participants and give their position on the cultural issue. Take about 15 minutes to discuss your position and prepare your case.

Alternately, take several days or a week to formally research your issue and position.

Each group will be given 2 minutes to present their case. When each case has been heard, the table is open for discussion. The discussion may last 15 minutes, longer if necessary.

At the end, each group will be given two minutes to summarise their position and to propose a solution.

These topics are good for two sided debates.

Solutions may be drafted in the form of a press release. You may decide to take the issue farther by holding a “press conference’ where the solutions are presented as brief statements to the press. In the press gallery is:

• an environmentalist
• a relief agency (Red Cross, World Vision, Save the Children)
• a politician
• a member of the “public”
• a newspaper reporter
• a business person looking to turn this into a business opportunity

Safety

A Caribbean island, popular with North American and European tourists for sun, beaches, parties, waterfalls, packaged holidays and cruise ships has experienced a decline in tourism due to small crimes against tourists. These crimes include pick-pocketing, knifings, swearing, resentment, refusal of service, muggings, and theft from hotel rooms. The tourist board and business community has responded over the years by creating ‘gated, all-inclusive resorts’ to ensure the safety of the tourists. Tourists now arrive at the airport, are transferred by chartered bus or limousine, and taken to their gated resort with no exposure to the local population. Tourism is the main source of income for this island paradise.

A meeting is called to solve whether to promote tourism to the island or not. At the table are the local residents group who dislike the tourists and the tourist board representing the hotels, restaurants, and tourism businesses.