Tell Me Where You Are From and I Will Tell You How Much You Get: The Role of Internal Marketing in the Tourism Industry

In the tourism industry, employees from different countries and cultures are invited to work together as an integrated team, while the enterprises try to convert this multicultural environment to corporate culture. The main objective of this research is twofold, firstly, to investigate whether the race of an employee in a tourism business is a decisive factor in determining his remuneration, and as well as, what is the role of internal marketing in mitigating, or not, to this discrimination. In order to accomplish these research goals a structured questionnaire was created and distributed to employees and executive managers in the tourism sector. The results support that there are racial discriminations and, indeed, the majority of employees has perceived that there are these discriminations both in salary and job positioning. Moreover, the results show the moderating effect of internal marketing and its importance in fostering culture co-creation, a role that seems to be missing.