NLPinBethlehem cultural tourism

some participants:

NLP in Palestine, Bethlehem,

NLP Workshop cultural tourism

Mai 2018 for the Arab Educational Institute

Working together to promote just peace by setting Quaker values in action

'Communication with tourists from different cultures'

We focused in this workshop on communication with tourists from different cultures. It is important to become conscious about differences in the model of the world even with people from more or less the same culture.

Therefore we did the experiment to investigate the differences in internal representations of the participants on the word 'Tourist'. We asked everybody to write 5 words which come to one's mind when you hear the word 'tourist'. The next question is then how many of these 5 words they think is written by everybody. The most participants thought 1, 2 or 3. We then asked them to check with their neighbors and then we asked the whole group to compare. The answer is always zero in every group we group we are training. This is much less then we expect! Our model of the world is much more different even within one culture! That means that if we want to bridge cultural differences we can expect even more differences.

To show more clear what culture is, we showed two photo's of our stay in Aida camp with one of the participants Islam. It was a lovely experience that she showed a beautiful dress and asked Marlies to try it. It looked beautiful and we all enjoyed it. Then we liked to make a little show about to imagine our second wedding and Sytse put his arm around the shoulders of Marlies. Everybody liked it.

When Sytse kissed Marlies on the lips their was great laughter. In the workshop Islam told that we should not have done this in front of the children because it was too much linked with sex. Even when everybody knew that we were 47 years married it was against the culture. At my question if it was allowed that husband and wife could fight in front of the children one of the participants said that "we are blind blind people, we see it on TV but not in the house." Kisses on the mouth in front of the children are not OK, on the cheek is OK.

If you want to develop cultural tourism you have to deal with the differences and you have to communicate about what is attractive to visitors.
Before asking to give a speech of one minute for an audience we gave them some instructions and examples.
The first instruction is: be positive!
Tell what they can expect and not what is failing or what is not permitted. So instead of saying: 'You don't have a bathroom in your room.' It is more clear to say the common bathroom is on the ground floor, 'Your room is on the second floor.'

An example of advertising by WIAM.

Three participants took the challenge to speak one minute. After every speech we asked everybody to give feedback following the sandwich feedback, what is meant to stimulate the learning process.
The feedback was about being more explicit in cultural things like Palestinian Cooking, housing, exchange about religious and political views, participating in the life of a Palestinian family.
Other improvements could be done by even more looking at the audience and paying attention to the public, open hands in stead of closed hands and other body language. Use more positive expressions if you speak about not smoking (smoke free, or pure, fresh air) and less emphasis on luxury. The hotels in Bethlehem will give tourists luxury, privacy and better practical conditions, a Palestinian family has much more culture and warm family life to offer.

Islam asked us to tell about our experience in her guesthouse in the Aida camp. We told that we were so touched by the love of the family for her heavily handicapped 18 year old son. (see photo). We also liked to feel welcomed in the camp with the narrow streets and welcoming people.