A Study on Experiential Learning Model of Tourism Management in Higher Education in China: A Case Study of Chongqing Normal University

Abstract

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has brought a great impact on the whole tourism industry and thus has profoundly affected the market demand for tourism talents. In order to cope with the changing market environment and to solve the problem of misalignment between the real supply and demand of tourism talents, structural reform of tourism education in China is urgently needed. Tourism management is a practical and application-oriented major, which is closely integrated with the tourism industry and society, and practical teaching is an important part of it, and cognitive experience activities are an important practical teaching part of this major. In this paper, taking the tourism management major of Chongqing Normal University as an example, through analyzing the current market demand characteristics of tourism talent and the dilemma of tourism talents cultivation in colleges and universities, experiential learning was introduced in the practical teaching and the OTCPE cognitive experience model was constructed. The model is designed to solve the problem of disconnection between tourism talent training and market demand. The practical results of this model prove that it has a very good promotion effect on students’ professional ability, practical ability, learning effect, and learning initiative.