The Managerial Gaze

Abstract

Tourism has been studied and researched in higher education for more than 40 years and in many ways it has now established itself a significant part of the academy. However, at a time of change and rationalization in higher education, tourism, along with other areas of study, needs to be able to justify its position. Increasingly, academic managers are seeking such justifications, often using readily available metrics. The purpose of this paper is to examine the position of tourism using these same metrics, for teaching, research and impact and for three different countries, Australia, China and the UK. In doing so it highlights tourism's strengths and weaknesses from a managerial perspective but at the same time it exposes the relative narrowness of this managerial gaze. It points to the need for the tourism community to strengthen its provision and broaden the gaze of the decision makers.

Gaps in tourism education and workforce needs: attracting and educating the right people

“…It is important to establish that while many studies argue that tourism operators often do not consider a degree in tourism to be a prerequisite for employment (Airey, Tribe, Benckendorff, & Xiao, 2014;Evans, 1993), the findings contradict with such claim:…”

A freegan pop-up café: Embedding critical hospitalities into the curriculum

“…Belhaseen and Caton (2011) identifies three benefits for students and industry of broadening tourism and hospitality management curricula, namely individual freedom, social justice and business productivity. Tourism and hospitality management education is now reflecting more openly on 'the connection of hospitality to society as a whole' (Morrison & O'Gorman 2008: 214), a trend which Airey et al (2015) views as a good indicator of the maturity of the subjects.…”

Destination personality: how to make the metaphor simpler?

“…When applying for a multi-dimensional destination personality, which affects destination selection, the generalizability of the scale remains limited due to lack of protocols for parsimonious adaption (Hosany et al, 2007;Low & Lamb 2000). Therefore, with the rapid growth of the tourism segment (Airey et al, 2015), overall low-profit margins (Hays et al, 2013), and plethora of brands and offerings within the tourism sector (Horner & Swarbrooke, 2016), it is important to understand the top destination personality attributes that define Kansas and which attributes are ranked as the most important.…”