Duality of facework in hotel responses of Shanghai and London to negative online reviews

The objectives of this chapter are twofold: (a) to revisit face negotiation theory by Ting-Toomey and develop a viable framework for managing negative online reviews by hotel and hospitality industry; and (b) to revisit theories of intercultural communication (particularly the ones by Hofstede and Ting-Toomey) and propose the notion and tenets of "transculturality" for describing and explaining transcultural communication in the age of globalisation and digitalisation. Integrating insights from socio-psychology and interactional linguistics, the chapter develops a framework of dual facework which classifies corporations' responses to negative online reviews into three types: corporation- (self-) oriented face strategies, customer- (other-) oriented face strategies and mutual (self + other) oriented face strategies. Further testing of the framework is conducted by examining face strategies used by five-star hotels in Shanghai (in Chinese) and those in London (in English) in responding to negative reviews by customers online. It is found that the frequency of other-oriented and mutual-oriented face strategies are similar across hotels in Shanghai and London, suggesting that in the age of increasing globalisation and digitalisation, industry culture rather than national culture is more the governing factor affecting the process of corporate communication. "Transcultural communication", rather than "intercultural communication", will be a major characteristic of culture and communication after years of globalisation and digitalisation.