Twitter Interview With Rossitza Ohridska-Olson

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Rossitza Ohridska-Olson. Rossitza is the person behind the Twitter handle @culturalrealms. Rossitza is a cultural tourism strategist and has been leading Cultural Realms since 2007, where she focuses on the global cultural and creative tourism.

This is a 2 part interview:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview for 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

Rossitza Ohridska-Olson – Part 1

Here is the first part of the interview with Rossitza.

Hi Rossitza, for those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Rossitza Ohridska-Olson: My first job after I graduated from Sofia University « Kliment Ohridski » in Geography of Tourism was one of the toughest one – trying to sell a totally unknown destination – Bulgaria, then communist country – for cultural, congress and event tourism.

I succeeded with one strategy – in international tourism you sell a dream, not a product or service. A desire of people to relax, learn, immerse themselves in the mystery of the unknown or the aspiration to see a well-known culture from a local perspective. Nobody buys the real estate of a hotel or the acres of a beach. People buy experiences, feelings memories.

With the appearance of the Internet, telling the story about a destination or an attraction became much easier. With Web 2.0. everybody can sell a destination – the user generated content can glorify, inform or trash a place or country.

How touroperators, destination management organization, cultural attractions, historic sites, governments and travel agencies are using this opportunity? This is the field and scope of my work – to help them sell the dream, without loosing their unique identity in the vast ocean of global media.

Working in the travel industry for more than 20 years, and being one of the pioneers in the Internet since 1993, I had a variety of business and cultural experiences. I lived and worked in 4 countries – Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal and the USA. Taking in account that in the USA I lived in worked in 2 totally different states (Minnesota and Florida), with different cultures, I could say that I lived actually in 5 cultures.

I live as a global nomad: between USA and EU, serving international clients and working with vendors from around the world. Sometimes I have to get up at 4 in the morning and speak with vendors in Izhevsk and continue to work throughtout the day until California closes its business hours at 9 PM my time. Yes, it is hard. And very rewarding. Living in 4 countries prior to establish my base in Florida, USA, helps. Speaking 5 languages helps too.

As born and living most of my life within the Mediterranean cultural mindset, I do business in very personable way – close relationships, mixing friendships with business, counting on the emotion of the customer to get more sales results for my clients.

Surprisingly enough, this Mediterranean approach works very well for my clients too – they consider me a friend, they can call me at any time and they know that I will find a unique solution to a marketing problem. As you know, creativity is one of the main business characteristics of the Mediterranean mindset. I am trying always to find out of a box creative solution. It helps my client and helps me to expand my knowledge.

This peculiar approach to cross-cultural interactions to the tourism business – the opportunity of the globalization and the challenges it presents – is in the essence of my role as macro strategies.

How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Rossitza Ohridska-Olson: I didn’t pick up my cross-cultural skills. They picked me. The first necessity to develop them was in high school. I was educated in a French high school in a communist country. You can guess the cultural differences, and the challenges.

As a student I wanted to get close to the French culture, without being accused of collaborating with the “West”. My classmates and I managed, without too much trouble, although we were considered different from the other Bulgarians. Still we are.

Then, my education in the University: I had classmates from all over the world and had to learn how to communicate with them without prejudice and embrace the differences. That was very difficult in Bulgaria, which was close-minded, racist, and clicky country at that time. After graduating, I worked mostly with Spanish and French people, once again, in Bulgaria. With the local KGB lurking behind my back, once again, I had to balance between political correctness and adaptability to my clients. I was arrested 2 times – not very good track record for my intend to balance between these 2 requirements, but finally, I could get away from these absurdities and emigrated to Spain.

Then I moved to Portugal, Minnesota and Florida. In each country I lived, I made mistakes and tried again, and finally got it right with the tireless attitude to do whatever it takes to adapt to local cutlures.

In the last years, outsourcing some of the company services, helped me a lot with my cross-cultural skills. My vendors help me with shortcuts through the cultural differences – I can ask them about anything and they will give me an appropriate cultural advice about their country or region.

How do you use your cross-cultural skills in your job?

Rossitza Ohridska-Olson: I use my cross-cultural skills in two ways.

First, to understand my clients, who come from very different cultural background. Not only geographically – from different countries and regions – but also from different business cultures. Some of them are governmental organizations, some of them have European mindset – more social responsibility, some – more American – more bottom line direction in their business approach. Understanding my client needs takes a lot of cross-cultural skills.

The other way I use my cross-cultural skills is to make my clients succeed on different markets outside of their countries. That involves a lot of research, competitive landscape analysis and skills to convince my clients to what extend they have to adapt to local rules and what markets they don’t even have to try to enter, since it will be not productive and profitable. I always believed and dreamed that the international tourism should be the number one global industry.

In fact, it is not, but still is one of the most successful consequences of globalization. It offers exchange of experiences and helps people to open their minds to other civilizations and cultures, which is the reason I entered in this business in the first place.

Can you tell us about your blog?

Rossitza Ohridska-Olson: Before creating my blog, I started to respond to issues on the Internet that interested me or that I believed were important.

My first blogpost was not even related to the cultural tourism – it was an opinion piece in the Batak terrors in 1877 when an entire town was slaughtered by the Turks. The Bosh Foundation in Germany had financed a research that called these events “a myth” in spite of tons of documents proving the veracity of the killings, rape and destruction. Some German scientists eager to receive funding invented this research and deeply offended the entire Bulgarian nation. Clash of cultural understanding and misinformation on history were the reasons for the Bosch Foundation to give the money.

After this blogpost, the Foundation withdrew their funding and the blogpost was published at large in the Bulgarian press. I have seen that I can change the reality with a blog piece. That was under other blog address. The blog was named “Save the Bulgarian History” and I published only one piece there afterwards. Then, there was a client who had the company newsletter called the same way as the company. I believed that the newsletter should be named differently and proposed “Cultural Realms”. The client didn’t go this direction, but I registered the name, because I believed is a great name for cultural tourism website anyway.

So when I decided to share my knowledge on the business of cultural tourism, I used “Cultural Relams”. I started to publish some of my opinions on cultural tourism, country branding, creative tourism, destination branding, etc., plus some pieces on cultural discoveries, monuments and sites totally unknown outside of Bulgaria.

Since my writings are much more like articles then blogposts and research pieces, many of them take long time to produce. Hence, I don’t blog as often as I should or I want. I supplement my blogging with almost daily tweets, facebook and linkedin announcements and short comments on cultural events, cultural tourism issues, etc. The blog is more as a book with chapters, that I try to write very carefully. I hope that this way the articles are meaningful as advice and action plans to be used by the readers.

I don’t blog everyday commenting on news or happenings in the cultural tourism business. I tweet about it or post a line or two with a link on facebook. Since my blog is more on the side of “serious” reading, I achieved the results I intended. For man people around the world the blog is useful for their research and their business.

My readers come from 58 countries and from many different backgrounds. They are people engaged professionally in cultural institutions, NGOs, non-for profits, students, and of course, people from the travel industry: travel agency owners, tour operator employees, etc.

Some of the pieces, like the one I wrote about the famous Bulgarian archaeologist, Dr. Kitov in the night he passed away, and the Bojkov Collection in the Museum of the East in Moscow, are read by the general public. Two-three pieces on national strategy for the Bulgarian cultural tourism and technology applications to culture are read and commented by policy makers.

My favorite blog post, as well as for many readers, is the one advising on creative tourism and destination management. Is a series of advices, very simple to follow and up to the point. I might develop this into a book, if I have time for it.

My newest blogpost on country branding from the perspective of the global cultural tourism is also very interesting, since it reveals the relationships between the image of country and the implications on cultural tourism to this country. It is also in the form of series, and the two most important ones (trends and conclusions) are published simultaneously with this blog interview.

I have a couple of lists I’m building here on this blog, and wonder if you have anything you would like to share.

Have you come across any cultural stereotypes that bother you, or you find inappropriate?

Rossitza Ohridska-Olson: Of course. The most bothering are all the stereotypes related to the people from “Eastern Europe”, since I am directly affected by these stereotypes.

In the mind of many people, including the press and media, the “Iron Curtain” still exist and it will be very difficult to demolish the mental “Berlin Wall”, as it proves 20 years after destroying the physical one. I believe that the “Eastern European” country stereotype shouldn’t exist, since we are so different.

I even heard somebody saying on the TV here, in the USA – “their accent sounds as Eastern European”, which totally made me laugh, since in Eastern Europe there are 4 major groups of languages (Slavonic, Hungro-Fin, Romanic, and Germanic), and more than 20 languages. How you can say that an accent is Eastern European? But then, again, I guess, people try to simplify things when they are dealing with unknown cultures and this way they create stereotypes.

Some of the stereotypes are culturally induced, some of them politically. I hate the latest ones, since they are artificial and don’t help human understanding at all. The culturally induced stereotypes (gypsies are thieves, Russians are drunk, French women are “easy”, etc.) are unpleasant and very difficult to deal with, because of centuries of history, which created them.

There are also cultural stereotypes which, true or false, contributes to the image of a country in a positive way: Germans cars are perfect, French wines are the best, Swiss watches are the most precise, etc.

Do you have a favorite movie that could help people understand cultural issues?

Rossitza Ohridska-Olson: No. Successful movies in the field of intercultural exchange are based on stereotypes, which makes people watch them – they simplify a culture to an comprehensible digest, which rather creates a false image of a country then help understanding the real cultural issues.

Do you have a book you could recommend to help others improve their cultural insights?

Rossitza Ohridska-Olson: “The Culture Code” by Clotaire Rapaille, anything by Mikhail Epstein.

And finally…

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Rossitza Ohridska-Olson: I am trying to make the step from “cross-cultural” or “multi-cultural” to “transcultural”, as defined by Epstein. As he says : «This is when a firm cultural identity relies not on hybrid formations, but on a variety of potential cultural signs, a universal symbolic palette, from which any individual can freely choose and mix colours in order to paint his or her self-portrait ». It is time to create a transculture, not adaptation only. Adaptation is a difficult process, in which sometimes the identity get lost. I don’t want this to happen to me. That is why I pick and choose characteristics of one culture, absorb them and apply them to my entire identity. Sometimes is difficult, but I guess I can achieve it.

In addition, I would like to understand more cultures. Some of them are past cultures – the Persian, the the Hettite, the Skittish. Some of them are contemporary – the Middle East, the Far East. Major obstacle in understanding these cultures is that I don’t speak the languages of these cultures, which is number one requirement to get the feel and the color of them. I had a friend from France, who learned Russian only to be able to read Pushkin in original. Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of time to learn more languages to the extend to understand the original texts written in ancient languages or in modern Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, or Japanese.

Traveling or leisure or business to the countries where these ancient cultures were created (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Japan) helps the understanding more then the translations of old texts into modern languages. If I can visit all these counties for a period of 2-3 months in each, it will also help me to get the grasp of the present cultures in these mystic places more than I understand them now, only based on short trips and literature. My firm believe is that “dead civilizations” are very much alive in many contemporary behaviors, ethos and attitudes. And this is what drives the cultural and creative tourism, in a sense, a type of “time travel”, isn’t it?

Rossitza, thank you for sharing so much with us in this portion of the interview. I look forward to hearing your answers to the 10 Cross-Cultural Questions on Twitter with you later today.

Rossitza Ohridska-Olson- Part 2 – The Twitter Interview

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Rajeev Edmonds – @mintblogger
• Rossitza Ohridska-Olson – @culturalrealms
• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Lucy Chatburn – @pocketcultures
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Chris Cotter – @CotterHUE
• Jack Yan – @jackyan
• Silvia Cambié – @XCulture
• Bill Ward – @DR4WARD
• Thierry De Baillon - @t_de_baillon
• Seshu - @PicSeshu
• Neil Urquhart - @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle - @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan - @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle - @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline - @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow - @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett