Teaching Tourism

Book excerpt: Tourism as an activity is increasingly being criticised for its exploitative and extractive industrial approaches to business. Yet, it has the power to transform and to regenerate societies, cultures and the environment. The desire to explore the world around us is deeply embedded in many people’s psyche, but it comes at a cost to the environment and often to the residents of the visited communities. Much of tourism education has been closely linked to preparing students for future professional practice, but the challenges and opportunities linked to its consumption require that its future leaders must exhibit very different values and understandings to tackle ever more complex and wicked problems from which tourism cannot dissociate itself. This compilation of values-based learning experiences can be adapted to suit the needs and disposition of individual instructors and aims not only to engage students in the subject matter but also deepen their understanding of its complexity and interconnectivity and help them become global citizens that lead lives of consequence.