Communicative Competence in Tourism-Oriented Service Professions: An Empirical Approach to Curriculum Development

“English for Tourism” is a core component of university curricula and language school programs in many tourist destinations. However, a closer look at course concepts and teaching materials often raises the question of which professional contexts these courses are designed to address. It seems evident that tour agents, hotel staff, and tour guides each face distinct communicative tasks.

This presentation introduces an empirical study that examines communicative tasks in tourism-related service professions. Data collection focused on four key contexts: tourist information centers, restaurants, hotels, and public transport. Within these settings, interviews, observational data, and training materials were analyzed. Through qualitative content analysis, the study identified workplace-specific scenarios and mapped their corresponding sequences of actions, resulting in a comprehensive scenario catalog. Drawing on selected excerpts from this catalog, the presentation will explore the following questions:

1. To what extent do communicative tasks overlap across different workplaces?

2. How can the scenario catalog serve as a basis for curriculum development and course design?

3. For which other ESP contexts is the study’s methodological approach applicable?

4. What further research needs arise from these findings?