Time: Students can start their studies approximately within a week after enrolling on this course. The estimated time for completing this course is 3 months. 
Place: Online studies
Extent: 3 ECTS credits
Number of study places:
Target group: Everyone interested in the topic
Lecturer: Course is completed independently

Credited in degree at Xamk: All Bachelor level degrees at Xamk
Area of competence mentioned in Curriculum: Optional studies
Enrolment by: 29.10.2023
Price: Free of charge

Note that you can enrol for Open UAS studies at the maximum of 50 ECTS credits per semester. One person’s enrolments exceeding 50 ECTS credits are deleted in the enrolment order. Paying attention to this is important when planning your studies.

Please also notice, that
Xamk degree students cannot enrol on Open UAS courses.

Learning outcomes:

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

  • recognize the growing importance of the international and global nature of tourism and hospitality
  • understand the multicultural aspects of tourism and hospitality activities and importance of studying cross-cultural aspects from the perspectives of both service providers and customers
  • apply the concepts of intercultural competence, intercultural sensitivity and intercultural intelligence and their relevance for tourism and hospitality
  • apply the cultural dimensions, proposed by Geert Hofstede and other experts, to provide ef?cient and effective services

Contents and methods:

Tourism and hospitality are service industries where visitors from different nationalities and cultures come into contact with host cultures. It is imperative, as the international market grows, to understand the influence of national cultures on their consumers in order to best serve and compete for a share of those diverse markets. As the tourism industry becomes more culturally diverse, future tourism and hospitality managers should understand their customers from different cultural backgrounds.

The course “Cross-cultural professional communication in tourism and hospitality” offers students a comprehensive guide to the influence of culture on service providers as well as on customers, affecting both the supply and the demand sides of the industry.
This online course includes self-guided online lessons, template based analysis and a development plan for a company.

All course tests are designed so, that they are opened only on a given period, which is mentioned at the topic test. At the end of the course you will pass an online final test. Instructions you could find in Learn.

The course covers 3 ECTS credits, totalling 81 hours of student work. The number of hours is theoretical and varies according to student effort.

Study material: 

Study material pages are designed to help you find the valuable learning material.
This course is carried out in a Learn educational environment. It is totally automated. It contains online material, online tests and final test. If you need to get individual counselling, you could get it online, or by meeting the teacher, pointing out the reason and the date by sending a message to the teacher.

Assessment:Accepted/Failed

Transcript of records will be delivered by request by email in PDF form.

This course is based on the curricula of Xamk's degree programmes and the Finnish credits are fully compatible with the ECTS.

Additional information on enrolment:
Open University of Applied Sciences office, email: openstudies@xamk.fi.

Terms of cancellation: 
If you are not able to participate in the course, please let us know as soon as possible by email openstudies@xamk.fi.

Before the course starts, you'll receive an invitation by email to this course.

Please note that there can be changes in the course details in terms of the timetable and teachers, for example.

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South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences is audited by the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC).