ABSTRACT
Internet advances enable students to receive and interact with educational materials and to engage with teachers and peers in ways that previously may have been impossible. Indeed, because of its three unique features namely, interactivity, connectivity and technological convergence, the Internet has irrevocably altered how people access information and how much information anyone can access, while local and wide-area networks release the Internet as a learning resource with software tools that enable interactive communication. e-Learning or Internet-based learning, therefore, offers significant opportunities for those in the tourism sector to up-grade skills and knowledge, as its flexibility matches the specific conditions of work within the sector (Sigala, 2002). Moreover, good e-learning can foster collaborative learning by drawing on the expertise of leading subject authorities in all key subject areas, which in turn also allows students to experience multicultural diversity and teamwork by interacting online with people of different social and cultural background. The acquisition of social, multicultural and communication skills are of a crucial importance for tourism graduates (Christou, 1999), because the inherently multinational and cultural tourism workplace requires a knowledgeable workforce that can work collaboratively irrespective of their spatial, time and cultural differences. e-Learning also acclimatizes graduates to the changes occurring in the tourism workplace, e.g. growth of e-business applications and increasing alliances and merges among tourism companies.
