What kind of tourism talents will the world need in the future?

Dear reader,

this Wednesday your humble editor is on the way to China to attend the First Dean’s meeting at the Sun Yat-sen University (Zhuhai Campus). Zhongshan Daxue is among the top 10 universities in China and is celebrating its centenary in 2024. The Tourism Department is “only” 20 years old, but has developed in one of the most important ones in China under the leadership of my colleagues and dear friends Bao Jigang and Xu Honggang.

To celebrate, leaders of tourism programs in universities from all over the world will come together in the coming days to discuss the future of academic tourism education. This is a necessary discussion: Students do not need lecturers anymore to learn about “facts”, Google or Baidu and Wikipedia, ChatGPT, Gemini etc. are providing such information within seconds. Learning which sources are trustworthy and how to understand that “facts” are always in somebody’s interest to present in a certain way is what is missing in the school education of many young talents. At the same time, Climate Change and an emerging scary new post-democratic world order are putting also tourism into a completely new surrounding which students will have to navigate in the future.

Your humble editor has been given the task to give a short presentation answering the question: “What kind of tourism talents will the industry need in the future?”. The question is already part of the problem. Tourism as the biggest industry in the world and one of the main sources of avoidable pollution can no longer just look at the interests of the “industry”. We need to put the interests of mankind in our focus, with future tourism leaders concentrating on developing Meaningful Tourism for a sustainable future. That’s why your humble editor changed the topic to “What kind of tourism talents will the world need in the future?” The presentation will argue that three major trends are shaping the future working world of tourism practicioners: Climate change, a worsening global political situation and AI. The results of these development will lead to new needs for tourism education not only in China:

Talents the world need in the future should be taught to:

·???????? Embrace Creative Destruction

·???????? Develop new business models

·???????? Treat customers as co-creators

·???????? Deeply understand IT and mathematics, but also

·???????? Being able to react and pro-react to cultural and generational differences in demand and behaviour

·???????? Work in international and in human-machine teams and to

·???????? Put Meaningful Tourism as the central KPI for sustainable success.

Your humble editors’ days as a full-time professor are over, however, working now in Nepal has confirmed yet again the need for a very different tourism education if “the industry” is supposed to play its role in being a force for good in the uphill fight against Climate Change.

Next week COTRI Weekly Editorial will provide a report of the NICE Nepal India China Expo 2025 Roadshow, which will take place in Guangzhou on the 2nd of December and in Shenzhen on the 4th of December in cooperation with GITF Guangzhou International Travel Fair 2025. If you are in the area, please join!

As always, best regards from Prof. Dr. Arlt and the whole COTRI INTELLIGENCE team!?