Tourism education on and beyond the horizon

Abstract

In the context of the changing economic, social, and technological environments, this paper projects the need for radical transformations of tourism education, including curriculum, program offering, pedagogy, and learning environment. Entrepreneurship, innovation, crisis management, data analytics, humanities, and communication are essential elements of broad-based tourism curricula. Cross-national, online, and “fluid” degrees will flourish and be widely embraced. The increased adoption of blended learning and flipped classrooms, knowledge co-creation learning arrangements, and robot teaching assistants will change the job nature of educators. The integration of formal and informal learning spaces, with the use of augmented and virtual reality tools, will further challenge educators' roles and their use of pedagogies.