Advancing hospitality and tourism education and research through global crises

Introduction

Hospitality and tourism higher education has experienced fundamental shifts and dramatic changes for decades across the global landscape. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic further interrupted traditional teaching and learning activities. Both students and educators grappled with the immediate transition from face-to-face to online or hybrid teaching and learning modalities (Park & Jones, 2021). In response, how to transform the existing curriculum to ensure student learning experience and outcomes became critical (Seo & Kim, 2021). The pandemic not only promoted the urgency for educators to seek alternative instructional formats in adapting to the changing learning environment and demands, but also afforded the opportunities for scholars to inspire transformative and active learning. Facing characteristic shifts in global mobility and student learning styles, Shi et al. (2021) illustrated a case study of redesigning an introductory tourism course from traditional teaching to student-oriented active learning. Their study demonstrated that transformative and active learning is conducive to developing the students’ intercultural competence, critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills. Equipped with such competencies and skills, hospitality and tourism graduates are better prepared to meet the dynamic and evolving societal needs. It is essential for hospitality and tourism educators and scholars to identify emerging demands for these competencies and skills, to become innovative in curriculum design and delivery, and to timely disseminate best practices.

Since the onset of the pandemic, hospitality businesses and tourism organizations have witnessed an unprecedented onslaught on the normality of any sort. The pandemic has accelerated the challenges in coping with and the opportunities in leveraging the advancement in technological innovations as well as the continuing changes in demographics and people’s lifestyles. There is a greater complexity in destination images, marketing strategies, and tourists’ and residents’ behaviors (Zenker & Kock, 2020). Recognizing the prevalence of technology in people’s daily life including travel, an increasing number of tourism businesses and destinations have employed influencer marketing as a strategy to promote the destinations and communicate with potential tourists (Femenia-Serra et al., 2022). Mobile technology and social media serve as powerful agents and platforms to connect different parties and exchange information and experience. A 2020 study by Shi et al. indicated that, rather than hedonic function, the utilitarian and social functions of mobile technology significantly and positively impact tourists’ leisure travel experience. The enhanced leisure travel experience further mediates the relationship between the utilitarian function of mobile technology and tourists’ future mobile technology engagement. A virtuous circle can be formed between mobile technology usage and leisure travel experience with the function-improved mobile and social media apps. The development of technology and social media will continue to influence the perceptions and decisions of consumers in the hospitality and tourism marketplace and enable hospitality businesses and tourism organizations to segment, position, and target their audiences. In addition, societal transformations induced by the frequent occurrence of racial injustice and hatred call for evidence-based and impactful studies that shed light on the unique characteristics and needs of tourist segments that have been previously overlooked.

Instructional Innovations

On October 4^th through 6^th, 2021, the International Society of Travel & Tourism Educators (ISTTE) virtually held its annual conference in partnership with the Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, as well as in celebration of ISTTE’s 40^th Anniversary. The event highlights the dual themes of Instructional Innovations and Impactful Discoveries. This special issue of the Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism is sanctioned by its editorial leadership and ISTTE board to include representative presentations from the conference through its peer-reviewing process. As a result, this special issue features six case studies and four empirical articles on a variety of emerging topics on the two themes and in alignment with the journal’s mission. The collection makes timely and valuable contributions with theoretical and practical implications to the extant academic literature on hospitality and tourism education and practices.

The special issue opens with discussions about student learning and development from a variety of perspectives in the case studies. The first case study is conducted against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and echoes the importance of innovation in hospitality and tourism higher education in response to unexpected events and ever-changing learning demands. The authors, including Claudia G. Green, Amanda Copeland, and Viral Nitinkumar Karia, from Pace University in the USA, demonstrate the successful application of online learning theories and principles to a tourism management course. They expand the course components from the local to the global, aiming to provide students with the opportunity to increase their global awareness. The authors not only discuss the challenges, opportunities, and constraints for effective remote teaching and learning in a global crisis, but also share the lessons they have learned during the course transformation process.

Continuing the inquiry of course design during the COVID-19 pandemic, the second case study, conducted by Suh-Hee Choi from Kyung Hee University, South Korea, illustrates the challenges faced by a tourism geography service-learning course and strategies adopted to adjust the curriculum. Guided by the experiential learning theory, the author emphasizes the significance of providing frequent and small group sessions for students and including the fieldwork and online activities with the instructor and local community collaborators in tackling challenges such as limited opportunities for in-person interactions. Choi’s unique teaching experience offers helpful implications on how to develop and conduct service-learning activities to fulfill the course objectives when offline learning is lacking.

The third case study highlights the competency and skill development of hospitality and tourism students. Joana A. Quintela and Marília Durão from the University Portucalense in Portugal examine the improvement of undergraduates’ research competencies through a tourism destination management course at their university. The authors argue the importance of research competencies including analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills for undergraduate students in the working environment. They then introduce the development and implementation of an independent and inquiry-based project for tourism undergraduates. Their practices indicate the effectiveness of the research-oriented learning approach in enhancing students’ engagement and intellectual capacity and further provide insights for tourism educators to design competency-based courses.

Guided by critical race theory and transformational learning theory, four authors from three institutes in the USA (i.e., Emily Yeager from East Carolina University, Stefanie Benjamin from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Alana Dillette from San Diego State University, and Andrew Goad from East Carolina University) examine the influence of in-person and virtual field experiences on students’ self-efficacy development from two tourism courses at East Carolina University and the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Both courses involve community partners to promote African American culture and history. The results of their study show the significant role of collaborative projects in inspiring students’ self-efficacy in critically examining social equity and justice at a personal and community level.

In the fifth case study, Angela Durko from Texas A&M University in the USA investigates students’ affect, attitude, usefulness, and motivation toward online learning and identifies students’ perceived benefits such as enhanced mental health, flexibility, and positive academic performance in the synchronous learning environment. The findings provide support and specific suggestions for educators on how to better design and deliver online educational offerings.

Conducted by Rekha Maniram from the Durban University of Technology in South Africa, the last case study explores how to use authentic assessment to help first-year hospitality financial management students develop critical thinking skills in her university. This case study demonstrates that self-efficacy and confidence, emotional intelligence, and reflective learning are three major components that should be given more attention in developing critical thinking skills for students. The findings offer empirical evidence for educators to apply different methods to enhance students’ critical thinking skills.

Impactful Discoveries

The empirical articles collected in this special issue are characterized by their practical impacts on a diverse spectrum of consumers, organizations, and communities in hospitality and tourism. The first article contributes to the motivation literature in rural tourism from a unique trans-cultural and trans-national virtual phenomenon. Yang Jiao from Overseas Chinese College, Wenzhou University, Mark Zhenhao Meng from Indiana University Kokomo in the USA, and Yunzi Zhang from Northern Marianas College in the USA uncover how a Chinese YouTube influencer Li Ziqi introduces the rural idyll in a mountainous region of Sichuan Province, China and how the world audience cognitively and emotionally reacts to her curated showcase. Their work connects the key elements of rural idyll with Shi Wai Tao Yuan, a term to describe “a wonderland with flourishing peach blossoms” in Mandarin Chinese. This research inspires tourism destinations to promote themselves by creating virtual experiences for potential visitors.

Given the important role that social media plays in tourists’ pre-, during-, and post-trip stages, the second paper examines an interactive model of destination image including image formation agents and social distance as a moderator in the social media context. Heelye Park and So Jung Lee from Iowa State University, USA, find that social media as a multi-dimensional image formation agent only has a significant impact on the attractions of cognitive image. Furthermore, social distance demonstrates a negative interacting effect with autonomous, induced, and organic image information agents in forming the cognitive attraction image. Their study enhances the understanding of various image formation agents and social distance in the process of forming the image within the social context. Practically, their findings provide insights for destination organizations to take advantage of social media and social distance for destination marketing.

The third article focuses on an under-represented group in dark tourism. Surjeet Baidwan from Mount Saint Mary’s University – Los Angeles, USA, explores Black tourists’ motivations to visit a contemporary dark tourism site, namely the arrest site of Freddie Gray in the Sandtown neighborhood of Baltimore in the USA. This qualitative phenomenological study suggests that the major motivations of Black tourists on dark tourism include a desire to share, paying respects, and increased understanding of the events. The findings of this study not only enrich the extant literature on dark tourism, but also indicate that Black tourists are a significant and potential group for dark tourism.

This special issue concludes with an article targeting Chinese consumers who have received global attention from a variety of destinations and their tourism products, including tourism financial products. Xuechun Wang from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and Ai Xu from Beijing Normal University Zhuhai, China, investigate what factors influence Chinese consumers’ intention to purchase tourism financial products. The authors identify that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and trust positively impact Chinese consumers’ intention to purchase tourism financial products; however, the perceived risk shows a negative influence. Their study is helpful for tourism organizations to better standardize the tourism financial products system, strengthen the website functions, promote the risk control mechanism, and enhance the governmental supervision in order to attract Chinese consumers.

Conclusion

The future of the hospitality and tourism field could be shaped by the question – “what can tourism education offer the world?” With the increasing costs of higher education and global threats from the widening gap between haves and have-nots to climate change, educators need to think broadly about what meaning or value they can provide for students and society. Not only do the students need critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills, educators need to help them develop and grow as ethical leaders. While the former will help students address challenges like pandemics or adapt as technology changes the way services are provided; the latter is extremely important as social justice issues are more prevalent in the hospitality and tourism industries. Hospitality and tourism students must possess such human skills as empathy, cultural humility, and intercultural competence to be mindful of guests’ demands and developing environments that are more inclusive and safer for everyone. Human skills are also needed to counterbalance artificial intelligence (AI). While AI might help human resource managers scan resumes faster to find potential employees, managers should be mindful of how the AI algorithms are biased based on the programmer’s perceptions.

To tackle these challenges, innovation in teaching and learning will continue to be a core topic in hospitality and tourism education. Resulting from demographic shifts, today’s college students present different learning styles and expectations of teaching from earlier generations who serve as educators. To better understand the students and prepare them with solid theoretical knowledge and practical skills and competencies required by society, educators must periodically review the curriculum design and search for innovative instructional approaches. Moreover, the changing geopolitical environment and deglobalization have interrupted and reshaped the global scene of hospitality and tourism. Simultaneously, social media has become more and more prevalent not only in delivering and exchanging information and experiences but also in influencing the attitudes and behaviors of tourists and residents in the post-truth era. Hospitality and tourism researchers must be equipped with knowledge and skills to raise and investigate critical and inconvenient questions to inform the policies and practices of a multitude of stakeholders in hospitality and tourism.

The 2021 ISTTE conference themes of Instructional Innovations and Impactful Discoveries is the first step of helping educators adapt to the ever-changing landscape of education for hospitality and tourism professionals. The papers published in this issue not only provide examples and techniques that could be used by educators, but they also make educators aware of how technology and social injustice are shaping the hospitality and tourism industry. The guest editors and the editor-in-chief hope that the research inspires more exploration into enhancing hospitality and tourism education. An emerging area of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research is using neuroscience to improve education (Eyler, 2018). Classes and learning are charged with emotions (Cavanagh, 2016) as are tourism experiences (Godovykh & Tasci, 2020). While tourism and emotion research is not new, it is becoming more widespread. Educators who want to maximize student learning should capitalize on the emotionally charged atmosphere in classes to incite ethical leaders for hospitality and tourism organizations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).