This article analyzes five language groups of Asian tourists to Australia: Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Thai. The cultural differences between Asian tourists and Australian service providers are identified. The dimensions of the identified differences are determined by principal components analysis. The results indicate that in 73 (62.4%) of 117 areas of measurement, there are significant differences between Asian and Australian samples. The Japanese are the most distinct from the Australian sample, followed by the Korean sample. The implications of the results for tourism industry managers and marketers are discussed prior to the causal analysis of satisfaction presented in part 2, which shows that marketers cannot rely on perceptions of service alone to generate Asian tourist satisfaction but must also consider specific cultural values and rules of social behavior. Part 2 will appear in the May 2002 issue.Currently, the international tourism industry is faced with an increasing number of inbound travelers from Asia. The Asian tourist market has become the largest source of international tourists to Australia during the past decade. The Asian market represented nearly 50% of the total international market share in (Bureau of Tourism Research [BTR] 1995) and 42.6% in 1998 (BTR 1998b. The Asian market (excluding Japan), the number-one source of international tourists to Australia, currently represents 24.3% of the international market. The Japanese market, the secondlargest source, represents 18.3% of market share. The Japanese market is the largest single source, followed by New Zealand, Europe (excluding the United Kingdom/Ireland), United Kingdom and Ireland, and the United States (BTR 1998b) (see Table 1). Among the Asian markets (excluding Japan), Singapore is the largest source of visitors, with 23.0% of Asian market share, followed by Taiwan,