The tourism and hospitality industry is an exciting and social business area for anyone looking for a fun and varied job. Tourism is the largest and fastest growing industry worldwide. Educations are popping up everywhere as anything from vocational training to four year university degrees. Some of the most popular and well known educations are given in Switzerland and Australia.
What is tourism and hospitality?
Tourism is people's travel to places outside their day to day life. This trip is for a shorter period of time (less than a year) for vacation, work or other purposes.
Education Within Tourism and Hospitality
Tourism and hospitality is an area with focus on tourism, travel and service related work. Within tourism and hospitality there are different directions of study and careers. Courses and degrees within tourism and hospitality management range from travel agency sales to outback guide to event coordinator and international leisure management. Finding an education within tourism and hospitality is not difficult. There are lots of possibilities to choose from all over the world.
Tourism educations are very popular everywhere and most larger universities offer degrees and courses on the topic. The duration of the educations vary, as does the field of study. Schools offer anything from
business degrees with focus on tourism to hotel management degrees. Before choosing your particular course abroad it is important to check how the degree holds up in the country you aim to work in. Some tourism educations include a lot of national courses, which may cause problems if you are looking to work in another country.
There is also the option of doing a vocational degree in for example business tourism, event industry, culture tourism, ski instructor, horse guide or destination and product development within tourism.
Careers Within Tourism and Service
In the tourism industry you have the option of working within both the private and public sector. The private sector is largely made up of businesses within the hotel and restaurant sector, conference centers, camp sites, theme parks, and ski resorts. Within the public sector there are plenty of offices and institutions dealing with increasing national tourism, and development of the sector.
Work tasks within both private and public sector can span from economic management, planning,
marketing,
sales and
strategic development.
The future
The tourism and hospitality business is too broad to say how the future is going to look. At the moment, workforce supply is larger than demand. Depending on where you are looking to work however, the tourism industry may grow and develop to create more workforce demand.
