According to Hospitality Net on July 19th, 2007, the Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) of Cornell University is “making available to the hospitality industry an intercultural education exercise that was initially developed for its executive education programs and has subsequently been used in college courses and corporate training.” It is in fact a Cocktail Party Simulation in which “participants examine their experience and apply it to their own professional lives”. According to Cornell Professor Daphne Jameson - the simulation developer, participants gain new insights about the following principles of intercultural interaction:

• Cultural values are relative, not absolute;
• Intercultural communication involves emotional as well as rational responses;
• Invisible cultural differences, such as values, attitudes, and beliefs, are more difficult to handle than visible differences, such as manners, customs, and rituals;
• Deciding who adapts to whom—and how—is the greatest challenge in intercultural interactions; and
• Cultural identity is multidimensional, involving far more than nationality alone.

The University has made the simulation tool available for free on the center’s website: Developing Hospitality Managers’ Intercultural Communication Abilities: The Cocktail Party Simulation.