Assignment Instructions for the Cultural and Travel Brief

Culture:  You are asked to write a Cultural and Travel Brief based on the country that you chose (Greece) earlier in your Letter of Introduction. Imagine that your boss is soon to take her first business trip to that country and will be there for two weeks, making contacts with government officials and potential clients. Your brief will highlight the most relevant information about the local culture that will help her interact with people and conduct business successfully.  Include any significant do’s and don’ts and consider not only specifically business etiquette but also the culture of the broader society.
Assume your boss is female, and consider whether this will raise any special cultural issues in the country she is traveling to.

Mention the most notable local dishes she is likely to encounter and identify interesting tourist places she should visit if she has spare time.  (Unless there is a severe travel advisory – because of political unrest, for example – leave all political and economic analysis for your Country Analysis.)  Give your most important piece of cultural advice as a concluding remark.

Make use of at least 5 different references for the cultural part of this brief and list them all at the end of your main text (but before the Appendix) by author, title, publisher and date according to the citations style guidelines below.

Travel planning:  In an Appendix (excluded from the page count) information about: 1) any health precautions to be taken in advance (e.g. vaccinations); 2) visa requirements for US citizens; 3) an actual round-trip airline itinerary from the nearest international airport, 4) the country’s time zone relative to your home time zone; 5) a hotel where you think your boss should stay, 6) specific suggestions for a list of 5 gifts to take from your part of the US that will be appropriate for this culture and are worth no more than $50 each; 7) the currency and current rate of exchange with the US dollar.
List the references consulted for your Appendix after the Appendix.  The quality of the information you find is important, so remember the help that Lesson Unit 1.2 offers on resources.

Do not put in the travel appendix points that should be in the main text on culture, or vice versa.

Citation Style:
•    List the sources you have used by author, title, publisher and date using whichever citation style you are used to or prefer.  If you have no preference, use the APA method.  WSU has good summaries of the APA and other citation styles at http://wsulibs.wsu.edu/quickguides .
•    Make use of in-text citations, using the brief, in-text format of the APA method or your other chosen citation style.
•    For articles found on the internet, make sure that you follow the guidelines that your chosen citation style lays down for such sources.  The URL alone is not adequate.
•    You may include two interviews with persons knowledgeable of the country. They are not to be counted among the 5 minimum number of sources, but be sure to give their full names and contact information in your list of references.
•    Do not include your References in your page count.

Note: The purpose of your memo is to save your boss time, so, for example, tell her what cultural issues she should watch for and what visa requirements and health precautions are.  Do not just point her at web sites where she can find out about these for herself.

Be careful to avoid plagiarism. Cite all your sources of information.  If you cut and paste even a short direct quotation from a source, put the passage in quotation marks and, in parentheses, type the author or title and month and year of publication.

Formatting:
The cultural brief must be submitted in memo format:  See How To Write A Business Memo.

Length of the main text should be 2 pages, single spaced, excluding references.  Length of the Annex should not be more than three pages.  Margins should be exactly 1 inch all around (top, bottom, left, right). Font size should be 12 point Times New Roman, 11 point Arial, or the equivalent in other fonts. (11 point Times New Roman is too small, 12 point Arial is too large.)

*PLEASE READ CAREFULLY WITH THE ASSIGNMENT DIRECTION AND FOLLOW THOROUGHLY! THE COUNTRY FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT IS GREECE! I’VE ALREADY CHOSE THAT COUNTRY SO PLEASE DON’T DO ANY OTHER COUNTRY BUT GREECE!