Tourism By Default Not By Design

In a former life as a publishing-company owner, and indeed since that former life, I was and have been asked by friends and acquaintances if I could offer some advice to offspring or other relatives regarding "getting into publishing". It wasn't that I was being awkward, but for the career advice-seekers I would start with a question: what do you mean by publishing?

This is a fundamental question. It should be obvious that, as with any industry, publishing is the sum of very many parts, most of them decidedly unglamorous. But it is the glamour which is attractive. Getting into publishing was often a euphemistic phrase one fancies for becoming the features editor of "Vogue".

Tourism as a career is not dissimilar. It has its glamour but beneath this alluring surface is the humdrum: the laws and rules, the processes, the systems, the operations and the human contact.

The teaching of tourism doesn't vary greatly from country to country. Its components are essentially the same wherever it is taught. In Mallorca, an example is a university diploma for "international hostelry management". It has four courses. The first has to do with restaurants and kitchens, hygiene, equipment, level one English and German. The second deals with the "theory" and "practice" of the reception, finance, marketing, labour relations, law, English and German level two. The third goes into issues of quality, the environment, more finance, technology, higher levels of English and German. And finally, there is the fourth: the anthropology of tourism, tourist regions of the world, the history of gastronomy, managerial skills, business communication and culture.

Armed with all this lot, students from the Balearic School of Hostelry went along on Monday to a milk round at which various hotel groups and others were represented. The school's director said that in the last few years these businesses had been paying greater attention to the need for training and for professionals who are ever more specialised. As such, there was something of a giveway in what he said. "In the last few years." What had these businesses been doing before?

The tradition of tourism training in the Balearics is about as old as the tourism boom. The Balearics School of Tourism was founded in 1964. It is now part of the university, as is the hostelry school. Academic tourism education has, therefore, existed for years, but the comment from the hostelry school's director makes one wonder how much it has been valued and indeed how valuable diplomas and degrees are. Not that long ago - in 2011 - there was a fair old debate going on about just these questions. For too many graduates, their training was leading no further than the reception. This, though, was partly the consequence of tourism being the default industry and career in Mallorca and also of a concern that the courses were just not relevant. 

Tourism can of course be taught, and its teaching in Mallorca is due to become more elite and more in line with learning at business schools. The big-four hotel chains and TUI, together with the Esade business school, want to create a post-graduate, executive tourism school on the island. This, though, would be something quite different to the education for someone embarking on a career. Yet, the mere fact that leading tourism companies should want to create their own business school begs a question about the industry's involvement in all forms of tourism education. When the director of the hostelry school suggests that the industry is only now paying greater attention to the need for training, perhaps it is more a case that the industry hasn't considered the training to be relevant to its needs. And he offers a clue about the nature of this training when referring to ever greater specialisation.

Are catch-all diplomas required when what the industry needs are specialists in core areas of tourism to match the realities of Mallorca's tourism, such as marketing, such as customer service, such as cultural understanding? An implication of what the director has said and of the big-four creating their own school is that the industry has been too distant from tourism education. Yet, it is the industry which should be driving this education and moulding it in order to meet the challenges of a hugely competitive global industry.

Tourism as a career has been one by default and the education would appear to have reflected this. It has been training by default rather than by design. Design to adequately address these challenges and to adequately identify the skills and knowledge required and to so adequately identify and develop those capable of delivering these skills. The training should, therefore, become more elite and so should those undertaking the training in the first place. A world-class industry in Mallorca demands world-class training, and it needs to be the world-class tourism businesses which are guaranteeing it.