Dear JHTE supporters and friends,
JHTE has been around for 33 years – certainly one of the oldest pedagogical journals in the hospitality and tourism field. Miyoung, Michael and I took over the JHTE editorship in 2012. We were selected to continue on for a second term in 2016. Given Michael’s role as the Head of the Department of Hospitality Management at Kansas State University, he resigned his editor position after a six-year service. We are grateful for his contribution to our journal in those years. Michael has relocated to his home country, Germany, to work as a professor in International Business at Heilbronn University. Miyoung and I served JHTE as the Co-Executive Editors from 2012 to 2021. We became close friends while working together toward our goal of improving the stature of JHTE as a top-notch education journal.
During our term as editors, we managed five special issues. The first three were based on all ICHRIE conference papers in 2014, 2015, and 2016, respectively. These special issues fostered collaboration and communications among ICHRIE (federation) research directors. In 2020, Edmund Goh volunteered to handle the fourth special issue (32(4)) as a guest editor, entitled “Educating the Future Hospitality and Tourism Workforce: Trends, Issues, and Directions in Australia and New Zealand.” Since we tend to focus on the U.S, this special issue helped broaden our educational perspective to other countries. The final special issue (published in 2021; 33(3)) was entitled “The Impact of COVID-19 on Hospitality and Tourism Education.” Soobin Seo was in charge of this special issue as a guest editor. Given that almost all school systems have been under the heavy influence of COVID-19, this special issue iembraced such a timely topic. In experiencing longstanding COVID-19 and its variants, we are likely to develop a new normal with massive changes made across teaching methods and course contents.
As we began to receive more and more submissions from all over the world, our editorial board concurrently grew in size (from 40 in 2012 to 49 in 2021), representing internationally renowned hospitality and tourism educators. To that end, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to the entire editorial board for their assistance in maintaining the high standards of JHTE. Along with the board’s growth, there has been a steady growth in the journal impact: the latest CiteScore demonstrates an increase from 1.3 in 2019 to 1.8 in 2020.
Last but not least, we would like to thank all our past and present department chairs: Nancy Swanger and Bob Harrington, Washington State University; Haemoon Oh, University of Massachusetts; and Robin DiPietro, University of South Carolina. Because of their kind support and department resources, we were able to stay in our roles and thrive. Also, we would like to extend a big “thank you!” to Katie Gezi and Diamond Irwin from Taylor & Francis.
It has been such an honor to serve as JHTE’s Co-Executive Editors for nine years. We acknowledge our key stakeholders’ dedicated contributions to JHTE, including authors, reviewers, guest editors, and Taylor & Francis. We are proud of how much JHTE has grown since 2012, and we are ready to embark on the next chapter of our lives.
Welcome the incoming Co-Executive Editors, Po-Ju Chen, Cihan Cobanoglu, and Ingrid Lin! We have no doubt that their fresh ideas and commitment to JHTE will take the journal to the next level.
Once again, thank you all, and we will see you around!