The Tourism Education Futures Initiative

In recent years, it has become increasingly obvious that tourism education needs serious rethinking. Surging growth in tourism arrivals and receipts, going strong since the middle of the twentieth century, spurred a proliferation of tourism programs in higher education to meet the demands of the burgeoning industry. As more complex understandings about tourism began to emerge, however, it became clear that equating the industrialization and growth of tourism with social and economic progress was far too simplistic – indeed, increases in visitation and receipts do not always reap positive benefits. Simultaneously, rapid socio-cultural and economic changes are afoot, which are rendering the future increasingly uncertain. The jobs of today are markedly different from those of yesterday, and it seems certain that those of tomorrow will be different still. Students entering the tourism sector, with its high levels of volatility and rapid globalization, are going to need different skills and understandings in order to achieve meaningful and successful professional lives. It was in recognition of this landscape of change, and the demand it drives to rethink tourism education, that the Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI) was born.