Advancing hospitality and tourism education and research through global crises

Abstract

Hospitality and tourism higher education has experienced fundamental shifts and dramatic changes for decades across the global landscape. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic further interrupted traditional teaching and learning activities. Both students and educators grappled with the immediate transition from face-to-face to online or hybrid teaching and learning modalities (Park & Jones, 2021). In response, how to transform the existing curriculum to ensure student learning experience and outcomes became critical (Seo & Kim, 2021). The pandemic not only promoted the urgency for educators to seek alternative instructional formats in adapting to the changing learning environment and demands, but also afforded the opportunities for scholars to inspire transformative and active learning. Facing characteristic shifts in global mobility and student learning styles, Shi et al. (2021) illustrated a case study of redesigning an introductory tourism course from traditional teaching to student-oriented active learning. Their study demonstrated that transformative and active learning is conducive to developing the students’ intercultural competence, critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills. Equipped with such competencies and skills, hospitality and tourism graduates are better prepared to meet the dynamic and evolving societal needs. It is essential for hospitality and tourism educators and scholars to identify emerging demands for these competencies and skills, to become innovative in curriculum design and delivery, and to timely disseminate best practices. Since the onset of the pandemic, hospitality businesses and tourism organizations have witnessed an unprecedented onslaught on the normality of any sort. The pandemic has accelerated the challenges in coping with and the opportunities in leveraging the advancement in technological innovations as well as the continuing changes in demographics and people’s lifestyles. There is a greater complexity in destination images, marketing strategies, and tourists’ and residents’ behaviors (Zenker & Kock, 2020). Recognizing the prevalence of technology in people’s daily life including travel, an increasing number of tourism businesses and destinations have employed influencer marketing as a strategy to promote the destinations and communicate with potential tourists (Femenia-Serra et al., 2022). Mobile technology and social media serve as