The perceived difficulties, training needs, job satisfaction, and intention to leave of expatriate hotel professionals working in mainland China

Abstract

With the rapid development in China's hotel industry in recent years, multinational hotel companies compete to build and open new hotels in China, and send more expatriate hotel professionals to work there. These expatriate professionals are confronted with unique social, cultural, and business characteristics in Mainland China. This study aims to investigate the perceived difficulties of expatriate hotel professionals working in Mainland China and their training needs. In addition, this study attempts to examine a relationship between the dimensions of perceived difficulties and expatriate job satisfaction and expatriates' intention to leave. International mail survey and online survey were used to collect data. The results indicates that the perceived difficulties of expatriate hotel professionals significantly predict their overall difficulty level, job satisfaction, and intention to leave. Some individual perceived difficulty dimensions are significant predictors of the dependent variables on itself. The current expatriate training situation and training preference of hotel expatriates are also explored and discussed. Implications to the expatriate study and the hotel industry are presented.