Challenges of Tourism Education: Emotions versus Business (original) (raw)

Political, socio-economic and cultural changes that have taken place in the world during the last years have influenced all the spheres, including tourism. This sets high standards for the tourism specialists. Therefore it is important to coordinate the work between tourism educators, tourism employers, the demands of the society and the students’ wishes in order to create the curriculum that would suit best to the actual needs of all the stakeholders. The goal of the present research is to study the tourism employers and tourism students’ needs in order to improve the curriculum and find out opportunities for its development. The study was conducted in 2009 in the fourth largest tertiary education institution of Latvia, which among other programmes provides well-acknowledged higher education in tourism. 192 tourism employers and 262 tourism students were questioned applying a similar questionnaire consisting of 5 parts. The questionnaire revealed the employers and the students’ opinion following the students’ training in the industry. The data were analysed applying quantitative data analysis software SPSS Statistics 17.0. Based on the ideas gained from the analysis of the research context and on the findings of the empirical study suggestions to improve the tourism curriculum were elaborated. Key words: development, tourism education, curriculum, needs analysis, leadership