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Tourism education in China plays an important role of supporting tourism development and ensuring the continuous supply of quality human resources to meet the overwhelming industry requirements. This paper presents a comprehensive review of current tourism education in China in terms of the various educational programs. The attitude of tourism employers towards human resource development was also assessed. The results indicate that a big gap exists between supply and demand for quality personnel, as the tourism industry is growing rapidly in China. A key dilemma of tourism education in China is poor curriculum design. Graduates from tourism education institutes and vocational training schools cannot fulfill industry needs and demands in terms of quality and quantity. A number of education reforms are discussed regarding curricula design, scholars’ and educators’ qualifications and knowledge, and standardisation of tourism education practices in China.

The future growth of international tourism is challenged by concerns of political instability, safety, socio‐economics and environmental impact. Furthermore, globalization has increased competition in tourism markets, and destinations are exposed to tough price competition on homogenized products by rivals worldwide. Given these challenges and the desire by locales for sustainable tourism development, human resource development is critical to the success of tourism in many markets. As countries and regions invest more in higher education for tourism, many of them seem to be launching these programs in English to broaden their market appeal. However, the market for higher tourism education in English (HTEE) is highly competitive and progressively global, so launching a program in English opens a school to greater competition as a price for reaching a wider audience. The purpose of this paper is to look at how tourism, wealth and higher education are linked, and how the location of HTEE is related to the importance and role of tourism in a country.

This research focuses on master programs in tourism taught in English. Starting from the current location of programs it develops two scenarios of the future spatial distribution of higher education in tourism in an increasingly global and competitive market.

In a first scenario, one where students are more mobile than teachers, programs will be concentrated in a few wealthy countries, which are also important tourism countries. In the alternative scenario, programs and teachers will follow students and, consequentially, distribution of higher education as well as tourism development and wealth will be distributed in a more equitable way.

This research is limited to a set of graduate programs in tourism taught in English. Future research should expand the data set to bachelor degrees as well as programs in national languages.

This paper provides useful information on how tourism, wealth and higher education are linked, and how the location of HTEE is related to the importance and role of tourism in a country.

China’s tourism and hotel education at tertiary level started in the late 1970s. A lack of qualified tourism educators and employees is a common concern for all levels of Chinese tourism education. Further education and training for the faculty in institutions has become an urgent need for the Chinese government and the institutions themselves. The purposes of this study are to examine the education needs of tourism academics in terms of their perception of the value of upgrading their qualifications, the likelihood of further studies, levels of attainment, preference of study places and possible barriers; to understand the degree of importance of upgrading their qualifications; and to identify the main tourism training and education issues facing China in the twenty‐first century. The results suggest that the Chinese academics perceive upgrading their qualifications and getting more exposure to the outside world as important to them. The training and education issues facing China in the twenty‐first century are improvement of the tourism education system and its structure, improvement in the design of the syllabuses with more language training and the balance of theory and practice, change from a traditional teaching mode to a more modernized innovative and interactive teaching mode, and greater responsiveness of education to the needs of the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to present a briefing on milestones of Malaysia Centre of Tourism and Hospitality Education (MyCenTHE) regarding its role as a nation-building exercise in developing human capital talent for future sustainable hospitality and tourism in Malaysia. Under a national initiative by the ministry of education, hospitality and tourism educational institutes in the country have set out to better prepare graduates for industry. MyCenTHE aspires to build a hospitality and tourism cluster (threefold) so that Malaysia is able to increase its annual output of hospitality and tourism personnel from 20,000 in 2009 to 50,000 in 2020 and increase the share of graduates with diploma- or degree-level awards from 13% to 50% by 2020. These expectations can only be achieved by creating a sustainable pool of workers for this sector. It was in this context for which “MyCenTHE” was conceived.

The current study is based on documentary analysis of secondary sources, qualitative in nature, and presents a case study of MyCenTHE with its key accomplishments in promoting hospitality and tourism education in Malaysia.

The hospitality and tourism industry in Malaysia is set to create 600,000 new job opportunities and in so doing, will need many more skilled, work-ready graduates in the coming decade. This paper highlights the collective efforts of the private higher education sector together with some selected public institutions (polytechnics) under the umbrella of the ministry of education through the MyCenTHE platform in promoting hospitality and tourism education nationwide via national awareness campaigns, conferences, skill competitions, seminars, forums and corporate social responsibility projects.

This paper is of value in its own context and in particular support from ministry and related authorities, 26 institutions of higher education working together, approaches to hundreds of local schools and thousands of audiences/participants in awareness campaigns.

Explores developments in tourism education to date, drawing on wider theoretical perspectives including the “McDonaldization” and the “Disneyization” of society. The article raises critical questions that tourism stakeholders need to acknowledge if tourism, both as an industry and as a field of study, is to sustain itself in the long term. To meet the evolving needs of stakeholders, this article proposes that tourism education should become more specialist in nature. The authors forward a three‐domain model of tourism education based on generic, functional, and product/market‐based themed degree routes. The article outlines a cost/benefit analysis of theming tourism education for the key stakeholders and puts forward an action plan for its implementation.

This chapter offers an experience-based report about the development of the first Scandinavian PhD program in tourism studies at Mid-Sweden University. This process is documented through a framework which, rather than having the coherence of a single clearly bounded discipline, focuses on tourism as a study area encompassing multiple disciplines. Tourism knowledge is derived through a synthesis of fact-oriented positivist methodologies and critical theory. The theoretical framework employed to develop the graduate program in tourism studies is presented by critically discussing its multidisciplinary base and briefly outlining future veins of further development.

This chapter presents an innovative learning opportunity for tourism students, International Tourism and Hospitality Academy at Sea, that has been in operation for the last 10 years. The program could render itself as a case study of Kolb’s experiential learning theory according to which knowledge is created by transforming experience. Its uniqueness and complexity lie in its diversity. This program has involved between 80 and 130 tourism students yearly from four to six institutions from different countries participating in new scholarly inputs by non-resident professors and instructors.

Inquiry learning points is based on questions and requires students to work independently to solve problems. Instructors are facilitators of learning, not people who give right answers and instructions to learners. Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences Porvoo campus in Finland is a new concept for learning. The lecturers have changed from traditional ones to coaches aiming at new competences with new tools to enhance learning. Their own implementation of inquiry learning has been assessed by themselves with an ongoing self-assessment process as a part of the normal tasks of instructional teams. Self-assessment is a part of action research that aims to develop an organization and the work in it.

This concluding contribution draws together key issues discussed in the various chapters of the book and connects them with future trends for tourism education. It places task in the changing world of higher education in general, and discusses changes in knowledge acquisition, ways of learning, knowledge content, and the role of educators in the future. This coverage leads to new learning technologies and their impact on the learning spaces of the future. Finally, the chapter discusses how projected tourism education programs can be designed to address society’s needs at this critical juncture in the history of the mankind. Creating responsible leaders for this global industry is perhaps the most important goal of future tourism education.

Previous work has conceptually explored the value of the humanities for tourism education and has considered the pressures that likely serve as barriers to its greater inclusion in curricula. This chapter moves the debate from the conceptual level to the ground, reporting the results of a survey of tourism educators with regard to the role of the humanities in the programs in which they teach. The study explores the prevalence of the humanities as primary and supporting course content at the undergraduate and graduate levels, sheds light on barriers faculty members identify for incorporating more humanities content into their curricula, and offers examples of creative ways some educators are currently engaging with such content.