Education and training in tourism

As early as 1982, Kelly (p. 22) suggested that the most critical undertaking for providers of tourism education and training is to have the right number of trained people, at the right time and place, with the right skills. This remains true today. Baum (1995a, p. 70) mentions many factors that influence or shift the workforce supply, including changing demographics, general economic conditions at local and national levels and structural shifts within economies. There is a confusion of terms relating to the tourism sector, tourism and

hospitality, and tourism education, training and human resource development. Defining the tourism sector in terms of education and training has been a subject of great interest to organizations such as the UNWTO, World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) and Organisation of Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD), for the obvious implication it has for their statistical research and analysis of travel expenditures and trip data. These organizations conclude that tourism is a service area spread over multiple sub-sector areas, with some exclusive to tourism and others inclusive of tourism (UNWTO, 1994; WTTC, 1995a; OECD, 1995). While this expanded notion of tourism is slowly achieving presence, the popular press and trade journals appear more interested in reinforcing single-sided

aspects of the industry, with articles focused on the hospitality industry or the food and beverage, airline, campground and the bed and breakfast industries. While there are many suggestions that tourism is an enormous economic

phenomenon, there remains a lack of a uniform or universally accepted definition of this sector called tourism. To date, there is no universally accepted standard industrial classification (SIC) code or system for tourism. Compounding the problem is that the range of businesses and activities in the tourism industry has continued broadening to encompass expanding fields of interest such as meeting and special event management, sport management and trade show management. (Pavesic, 1993, p. 291ß). If employers do not fully understand the overarching business to which

they belong, and conversely, education and training providers do not understand the scope of the industry for which they are producing workers, there is little chance of matching the quantity and quality of workers demanded with the quality and quantity of workers supplied. Several organizations, concluding that tourism is among the world’s

largest and fastest growing industries, have attempted to define tourism for measurement and analysis purposes. Of note is the work of the UNWTO, augmented by the WTTC, which developed a Standard International Classification of Tourism Activities (SICTA) to clearly delineate the supply side of tourism. SICTA was adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission as a provisional classification in March 1993 (UNWTO, 1994). The activities included in SICTA are based on differentiating businesses whose sales are totally derived from tourists and those whose sales are partially derived from tourist spending. For example, cruise line sales are totally derived from tourist spending, whereas car rental revenues derive from both tourist and local spending. The business activities of tourism under ‘Education’ include adult education, driving schools, flying schools, boating instruction, hotel schools, tourism education programmes, recreation and park schools, and tourist instruction. For the purposes of this chapter, the adult education and tourism education programmes are the focus. Discrepancies due to how tourism or the tourist activity is defined can

also be observed between national organizations, such as the US Travel Industry Association (TIA) and the WTTC. TIA predicted employment growth for tourism in the United States during the years 1992-2005 to be 30 per cent, while the WTTC projected US employment growth for almost the same time period (1995-2005) to be 16.7 per cent, barely more than one half of the TIA prediction (TIA, 1994, 2; WTTC, 1995b, 22). Critics, such as Leiper (1991, pp. 157-167), argue that those who suggest that tourism is the largest industry in the world are making a superficial observation, ‘utilizing defective notions about business and industry’ (Leiper, p. 166). As a result, he contends, the number of jobs in tourism is grossly exaggerated, having important implications for education and training. Leiper contends

that the futurist, Herman Khan, performed a disservice to the field 20 years ago when he predicted that tourism would be the largest industry in the world by the year 2000. Leiper argues this prediction was not based upon Khan’s forecasting ability, but upon his ability in the art of public relations. Khan’s projection, though, was quickly seized, adopted, and quoted widely at that time by a variety of interests it served, including academia (Leiper, p. 158). Although this study, like many others, has characterized the tourism

industry as highly fragmented, Leiper takes exception to this notion, suggesting this as a contradiction in terms. He contends that what defines an industry is its non-fragmentary nature. Not defining the tourism industry accurately, he believes, has led to tremendous miscalculations of its size and the true number of jobs it offers. He argues that misconception of the number of jobs available has resulted in a growth of courses and programmes in tourism at the higher education level, enticing students into an industry where jobs, in fact, may not be present or available. Leiper’s argument, if nothing else, suggests that an obstacle in analysing

the human resource needs of tourism hinges on the ability to find identity and secure definitional footing for the sector. It is important to reconcile the differences between the UNWTO, WTTC and OECD in defining both the supply and demand sides of tourism in order to substantiate its true size and economic dimensions. This will provide the means to analyse the human resource component of tourism, with particular reference to identifying industry demand and how to meet this demand through appropriate education and training (Figure 7.2).