Tourism courses at the higher education level in Indonesia: the perspectives of the stakeholders

Abstract

This article investigates the stakeholders' perspectives toward tourism courses at the higher education level in Indonesia. A multimethod, which combined two qualitative approaches, was utilised to obtain the data for the study. Sixty respondents from four stakeholder groups, including professionals, government personnel, educators and students, were interviewed to obtain their views on the current curricula of tourism education, approaches used, and the relevance of the course to careers in the tourism industry. Results indicated that most respondents believed a professionally based curriculum that focuses on accommodation and restaurant employment dominated the offerings. The majority of participants stated that fulfilling the needs of the industry and job availability were the justifications for the professionally based education. Tourism professionals maintained that the existing curriculum is appropriate for Indonesia as a developing country, whereas most educators and government officials suggested that the curriculum does not take into account the complexity of tourism's future management challenges. The findings also showed that most groups of respondents agreed that current Indonesian tourism education is mostly not serving the needs of the industry for managerial level skills.