Tourism Education: life begins at 40

Abstract

Tourism Education: life begins at 40 Tourism education is now about 40 years old. It has emerged as a subject of serious academic study from a rapidly growing field of practice. This paper explores the development of knowledge and research about tourism as a background to consider the ways in which the efforts and priorities of those interested in tourism education have changed and it questions whether the subject has reached a stage of maturity. It traces a pattern of change from a focus on vocationalism and the business aspects of tourism during which time attention was given simply to measuring and describing the education provision (the industrial stage); to a stage when other disciplines made their mark on tourism, associated with debates and analysis of the curriculum (the fragmented stage); to a broadening and more general consensus about the curriculum (the benchmark stage); and finally to concerns about the whether we are really taking a full and realistic view of tourism associated in the classroom with the nature of teaching (the mature stage). At this latter point the concerns of tourism education come more into line with other more established areas of study and the paper consider whether tourism education has now reached maturity. The paper draws mainly on published sources and the author’s own research and experience.

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