A Comparative Research on the Determination of Intercultural Sensitivity Levels of Tourism Students

Abstract

Tourism is a multinational sector in terms of service providers and users. Especially in the provision of a successful service, communication skills of the service providers should be very good. Intercultural sensitivity plays an important role to communicate successfully in an environment with people from different cultures. Therefore, in order to be successful in tourism sector, it is very important to be determined and developed intercultural sensitivity levels for students studying in tourism faculties. In this study, intercultural sensitivity of 530 students studying in tourism faculties in Balıkesir and Çanakkale were investigated. For this study the intercultural sensitivity is formed four dimensions: “respect for cultural differences”, “interaction confidence”, “interaction enjoyment” and “interaction engagement". In dimensions of cultural sensitivity, “respect for cultural differences” dimension has highest mean, whereas “interaction confidence” dimension has lowest mean.