Tourism

International sporting events such as the Olympic Games in Vancouver are linguistically complicated as they require a comprehensive language policy and planning in order to meet the requirements of the world. Multilingualism in such events is therefore paramount as it will ensure the quality of services a host city or country provides to the numerous visitors and participators at such an event. Vancouver is the host city for the 2010 Olympics and the Paralympics Games. Unfortunately the Vancouver Olympic Committee plans to hold a bilingual event. Though other languages will be represented at different venues, the sheer numbers of visitors and athletes will be in need of more than a few volunteer translators. This therefore will pose significant challenges to the committee as the two main languages to be used will be English and their official language French (Vancouver Olympics Committee, 2008).

The goal of the Vancouver Olympic Committee was to host sustainable Olympics this was a move away from the traditional nature of hosting Olympics. Previously in Beijing, whole stadiums and hotels had to be built as the then Olympic Committee worked hard to meet international standards. Part of their preparations was to ensure that all the cultural needs of the world have been met including the multilingual aspect. In comparison the London games are set to be multilingual and this is for the same reasons as in the Beijing games. Hosting international games therefore has a list of minimal requirements and part of that requires a host nation to cater for the need of the world as efficiently as possible. This may not necessarily mean the building of new infrastructure but it surely means that the multilingual nature of the world has been observed and that need sufficiently met (VANOC, 2008).

The challenges that the committee will face will include language barrier among the staff and athletes from non French or English speaking States, as stated earlier the sheer number of visitors to the city of Vancouver will be immense. These visitors will therefore want to travel, order food among other things. Therefore the number of trained personnel should be able to meet this demand. This would have incorporated a comprehensive training program where all the major languages of the world would have been offered and this would have enabled an already capable industry be all the more prepared for the games. The service and hospitality industry is at the forefront when it comes to helping these visitors and how the industry succeedsfails when catering to the needs of the visitors has great impact on the outcome and image of the host community.

Other challenges that the committee faced include the resources billed towards translation of the events to other languages this included the lack of sufficient bi- and multilingual translators and volunteers available for the games. Secondly is the representation of the official languages of the Olympics within the media fraternity and also within the public service domain including the security forces and as mentioned earlier, within the hospitality industry (VANOC, 2008).
               
Key institutions within the city that were also part and parcel of VANOC, were also faced with other challenges including ensuring that the public services such as traveling stations and other areas have services offered in both the official languages.

The same institutions were also required to improve on their service delivery by ensuring that all their services are offered in both the official languages of the games also to ensure that Canadas bilingual nature is properly considered in the coordination of health and security features of the games. Lastly the public institutions were also to ensure that they have monitored the official languages performance during the games and to report on the best performances (VANOC, 2008).
                 
The aforementioned issues therefore posed great difficulties when it came to ensuring that the language needs of the participators and other visitors were to be met. It was noticed that VANOC in particular concentrated on the two official languages by ensuring that all the necessary services have been or can be presented with two languages. The rest of the languages were therefore to be catered for on the volunteer program that was being faced with a lot of short comings and therefore insufficient. Even in public areas where most visitors would be going through as they tour the city, the committee advised the public sector to ensure that both the official languages are represent. This means that other foreigners within the city could only depend on guides who as said earlier were volunteers. In the light of all this issues and how they were met, then its is only fair to conclude that the lingual needs of many visitors will not be met and therefore it is right to conclude that although the committee did its best in ensuring that the games were well presented, the lack of a multilingual face meant that the committee failed to meet the required standards of language for an international event.  

Multilingual Skills and the Hospitality Industry
The hospitality industry is subject to a lot of changes and regulations as it involves the interaction of the different cultures. Globalization is one of these changes that has necessitated change within the Hospitality industry. Today its easy for one to travel from one end of the world to another because advancement in technologies has improved the nature and speed of traveling. Suddenly there is need for companies to open websites as the internet has become a key component of our lives as more and more people spend more and more time over the internet therefore creating a new frontier for marketing. This therefore means that the sites have to be multilingual so as to cater to the needs of all the cultures of the world. All this is to show the importance of being multilingual especially within the hospitality industry. This is so because the world is considered a global village meaning that people are moving ever so often covering greater distances and visiting new places. This people then are in need of certain services and to offer these services one has to communicate and understand their needs. It is for this purpose alone that the said industry must evolve and become multilingual (Carr, 2008).  

To survive in this evolving environment the hospitality industry must therefore adapt new ideas and technologies. In the case of the Vancouver, the city already has a bilingual policy as its citizens and the whole of Canada do speak both English and French. This however was no excuse for failing to properly incorporate other languages within the system for the purpose of meeting the required standards during the games, despite the fact that they knew there would be other languages present. They instead depended on volunteer translators on key areas such as hospitality. Therefore the

Adoption of a multilingual policy is relevant today not only in the hospitality industry but in all the key areas of our society (London Development Agency, 2009).
       
A multilingual policy is therefore a very important aspect when preparing to host an event of such magnitude as the Olympics. The next Olympics will be held in London in 2012 and part of the reason as to why they were picked to host the games was because of the pledged that they will adopt a multilingual approach and ensure that all the language needs of the games are adequately met. That is the sheer power of being multilingual.

The adoption of such a policy therefore means that the London Olympic Committee will push for the proposal that all public officials in London be equipped with the necessary language skill so that they are able to meet and properly communicate with people of diverse cultures. It also means that the hospitality industry in London has already started to ensure that its staff is under going intense training on the various international languages (London Development Agency, 2009).

This means that athletes will be able to sufficiently get the information needed while in London through their National Languages or through the international languages. This will also help in reducing the clustering of people from the same regions but will ensure that all cultures and languages are sufficiently integrated with the others therefore allowing all the participators to appreciate where the other is coming from. This I believe will also promote understanding and positive competition among the athletes as they engage one another (Kelly, 2008).

Finally the inclusion of multilingual skill in training of staff for the hospitality industry will ensure a ready market for the biggest market in the world and that is the world itself. This will ensure that your hotel is a destination of al the cultures in the world therefore exposing your industry to even greater benefits and work experience. This is evident in all the major tourist destinations and hotels in the world today. This places boosts of a multilingual staff and therefore enabling them to effectively cater to the visitors needs effectively. This also ensures that they are constantly entertaining more and more visitors irrespective pf where they come from.