Introduction

For some observers, “tourism higher education” might appear to be a term containing mutually exclusive words. Surely tourism cannot merit study at a higher level of education? Indeed in the UK, tourism degrees are sometimes bundled (particularly by opportunist politicians) into a category of deep disdain under the heading of Mickey Mouse Degrees. But new courses have often struggled for due recognition in the academy which is inherently conservative and traditional. For example Silver (1990, p. 131) reports that the UK CNAA (Council for National Academic Awards) board expressed considerable angst about new degree proposals:

I remember housing studies for example, was one of the crunch points as to whether you could actually make a degree of something of that kind. And then people would point to odd things like paper technology that some of the universities had had for years and said, well what's odd about housing studies.