Gaps in tourism education and workforce needs: attracting and educating the right people

Abstract

The intense development of the tourism industry requires a skilled and qualified workforce. It is important to attract the right candidates to the tourism education, and subsequently provide relevant education to prepare students for the industry after graduation. While work placements may be useful and important to some extent, they are not the ideal solution. Hence, alternative approaches such as simulations and flipped classrooms may be applied. To provide realistic expectations, a closer collaboration between industry operators and education providers is needed. Education providers should assume a more proactive role by inviting tourism operators and integrated them in the tourism education programmes as guest lecturers.

Keywords:

• tourism education
• tourism workforce
• higher education
• alternative teaching methods
• Norway

Acknowledgements

The author would like express gratitude to colleague Eskil Le Bruyn Goldeng for his valuable contribution in this research project. The findings of this research paper are based on a larger project partially funded by the Buskerud County Government and in collaboration with Buskerud University College (currently known as University College of Southeast Norway).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Xiang Ying Mei http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9691-1540

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by Buskerud Country Government.