Asian tourism educators: views of their employment and possibilities for interaction with industry

Abstract

This study argues that the care and development of the younger tourism educator is pivotal to the success of educating tourism students, but neither the research world nor business interests focus adequately on tourism teachers. A focused study of the views and needs of young tourism teachers from 10 Asian countries concerning their employment and job worlds was undertaken by the dual methodology of a survey and intensive conversational interviews. It was shown that the needs of Asian tourism educators were subtly different to their regional colleagues from Australia and New Zealand and included concerns about their access to business, influencing and dealing with senior staff and the status of tourism in the university. A mutually beneficial set of business-tourism educator outcomes was proposed to empower younger Asian tourism teachers.