Extension of Use of Foreign Languages in Youth Tourism – A Way towards Economic Development, Dialogue, Tolerance

Abstract

This paper aims to study the relation between the evolution of youth tourism in Romania in the European context and the enhancement factors of development represented by the formation of communication skills in foreign languages, with emphasis on the so called “rare” languages; these skills include culture knowledge on the target tourist segments. The research methodology consists in highlighting the potential of the economic development of youth tourism reflected by literature in relation to the increase in competitiveness of those operators who turn into good account the online and offline communication in various foreign languages. The research of statistical sources on the evolution of the youth tourism in Romania and throughout world is correlated with the provisions of the strategic development plans of this form of tourism and the modern teaching methods as well as the content of the training programmes in the sector of the communication in foreign languages.

The conclusions of the paper are:

• the youth tourism will have a globally sustained dynamics and the data in the paper demonstrate that by 2020 at least a quarter of the customers in this sector will come from among the young people under the age of 19;
• a specialist considers that the future of this form of tourism will be in countries such as Romania, where the UNWTO inaugurated in 2013 the first youth tourism cluster worldwide;
• in order to correlate the resources of the two sectors involved, i.e. youth tourism and education in foreign languages, it is required to have a complex strategic approach as the removal of the communication barriers and the management of cultural differences represent nowadays the way towards dialogue, tolerance and economic development.