Designing the Four-Year Tourism Management Curriculum: A Marketing Approach

Abstract

The literature indicated that most four-year tourism management programs in the United States were designed by educators with very little or no empirical input from the industry. As such, the undergraduate tourism curriculum lacks standardization and relevance to the needs of the industry. Like any entity in a market-driven economy, departments offering four-year tourism management education must base their offerings on a marketing approach instead of a selling approach if they want to remain sustainable. Accordingly, a two-stage study was undertaken to determine necessary elements in the undergraduate tourism management curriculum. The results indicated that the curriculum should comprise four educational clusters; 15 subjects were judged as very important.