Ethical ideals and expectations regarding visitor, staff and management among potential tourist industry employees

Abstract

This study has examined ideal ethical beliefs together with perceived visitor, staff, and management ethical expectations, and also employment context preferences among a sample of secondary college students in a major Australian tourist destination, many of whom would likely later seek post secondary college education for or immediate employment within the tourism industry. It has been found that ethical ideals generally exceeded those perceived to be held by current tourism industry staff and also tourism industry management; respondent ideals were perceived to be similar to those of visitors, except in regard to precepts such as helpfulness and frankness. Those less likely to perceive a divergence between ideal and actual staff friendliness were the ones more likely to favor tourism/hospitality/retail and also tourism/transport employment contexts. Finally, those graduands more likely to perceive themselves as holding ethical beliefs significantly different from visitors in regard to frankness were the ones more likely to deem tourism industry employment contexts as undesirable. Implications of these various findings are addressed.