The Importance of Intercultural Communicative Competences for Tourism Labour Market: Students’ Views and their Self-Assessment

Abstract

The present paper is founded on two pillars. Firstly, it is one of the current trends in education worldwide, i.e. to connect theory and practice. Secondly, it is the need to be interculturally competent speakers of a foreign language in today’s globalized world of massive migration flows and signs of increasing ethnocentrism. Based upon these two requirements, the ability to communicate in a FL effectively and interculturally appropriately in the tourism industry is a must, since being employed in whichever of its sectors means encountering other cultures on a daily basis. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to find out undergraduate tourism students’ opinion on the importance of intercultural communicative competences for their future profession as well as their self-assessment in the given field. The findings of the research, which are to be compared to employers’ needs, revealed that there is considerable difference between the respondents’ views on the significance of the investigated issues and their self-esteem.

Keywords

• intercultural communicative competences
• competency development
• tertiary education
• undergraduate tourism students
• questionnaire survey