Openings and closings in tourist offices in Belgium, France and the Netherlands.

Abstract

This paper deals with openings and closings in 400 service encounters in tourist offices situated in Belgium’s two main language communities, Flanders and Wallonia, in the north of France and the south of the Netherlands. On the basis of a detailed, bottom-up quantitative analysis of the structural properties of the openings and closings, we draw part of the interactional profiles of the tourist office encounters. Differences between the four regions are shown to be related to the degree of volubility and involvement of the interactants and to the degree of ritualisation and efficiency of the opening and the closing section.