The thesis highlights the essence, role and possibilities of international tourism as a factor of cross-cultural communication taking into account the present stage of cultural-historical dynamics. This analysis allows us to realize the specificity and irreversibility of the most dominant semantic orientations and the principles of the functioning and interaction of cultures as phenomena, where we can see the combination of the materially -cultural values and individual psychological qualities of a personality as the representative of the original linguistic and cultural environment.
The place of culturological discourse of international tourism in the field of modern socio-humanitarian concepts is determined. The methodological principles of its study as a sociocultural phenomenon are formed. The set of factors, which determine the features of communicative possibilities of international tourism in cross-cultural interaction through the prism of its ability to influence the processes of cultural integration, identification, the formation of mutual understanding and good-neighborly relations in the process of dialogue of cultures, are systematized on.
The importance of international tourism in the formation of intercultural competency is substantiated. The main tendencies and practical approaches in the training of specialists of the tourism sector, aimed at enhancing the skills of intercultural interaction in order to reveal the communicative potential of international tourism and to establish effective mutual relations, are analysed. The communication possibilities of international tourism in the formation of the positive image of Ukraine and its brand as an attractive tourist region.
The cross-cultural communication in international tourism is the knowledge and comprehension of achievements and the realities of the world civilization by the representatives of different cultural and mental worlds, who can cross the borders of countries and interact with other nations. International tourism can play an ambiguous role. It demonstrates inherent duality, which means the abilities to act as the instrument of the integration among peoples and their cultures and to contribute to the deepening of the identification and identity processes. On one hand, the international tourism partially destroys a cultural identity, reduces the duty to its community at the level of the following groups: social, ethnic, regional or national. In addition, it promotes the actual extraterritoriality of the traveller as well as the deterritorisation of the culture. However, in the process of «leaving» the way of the ordinary being, the tourist understands the meanings of the «stranger», «other» and rethink the value and the formation of a sense of the category «own/native». Due to understanding the importance and value of his/her native culture, the tourist activates the mechanisms that contribute to the incorporation into the another cultural environment without disturbing and preserving the constructs of its own identity. There are the integration into the multicultural community with the preservation of the national spiritual constants, the preservation of traditions and the reproduction of a unique mental identity.
In addition, the research of the sociocultural aspects of the tourism and its interpretation, which is the fact of cultural being and a peculiar value picture of the world, communicative significance and the special functions in the context of influence on the intercultural relations, will contribute to the formation of a tourism culture as a multidimensional integrative phenomenon and culturology of the tourism as a separate scientific field. The studies of these issues will be effective if they are researched in the context of the cultural and anthropological methodological positions. So, we can say the studying of the communicative potential of the international tourism in this field is actual.
