INTERCULTURAL BARRIERS IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY AND CHALLENGES TO TOURISM EDUCATION.

Globalization is one of the major trends of today's world, and at the same time a challenge, not only to the tourism industry, but also to tourism education. The modern civilization model is focused on overcoming intercultural barriers, national, language and cultural boundaries, on integration of the best national cultural achievements. The aim of this paper is to discuss the necessity of building intercultural competence for the effective performance of tourism employees in a multicultural environment. The fact that the new educational paradigm implies changes in strategy and content not only of contemporary language teaching, but also of humanities in general, is underlined. An important result of these changes is the integration of the elements of culture in the educational process. Based on the studied literature, this paper presents a model for exploring the effects of educational program on the formation of intercultural competence and its role on the effective performance of front line staff in tourist services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]