Coherence of Creativity between Tourism Education Stakeholders
Author(s):
Kamila Perederenko (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)
Format:
Paper

Session Information

ERG SES G 07, Higher Education

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-22
09:00-10:30
Room:
W3.15
Chair:
Jana Strakova

Contribution

Tourism industry is an important sector in the global economy and highly contributes to the employment worldwide (Donina & Luka, 2014). That’s why development of domain-specific competencies and high level professional knowledge in tourism higher education plays a crucial role. Skill shortages have caused significant numbers of tourism establishments worlwide to have difficulties meeting quality standards (WTTC, 2015). Employers in European Union experience skills shortages related to increasing specialisation within industry or to the fact that education curricula have not kept pace with the technological or innovative development of the sector (European Union, 2015). In Latvia also, it was  indicated  that  a  big  gap  exists  between  supply  and  demand  for  quality personnel.  Graduates from  tourism  education  institutes  and  vocational  training  schools  cannot  completely fulfill industry  needs  in  terms  of  quality  and  quantity (Dombrovsky, 2009).

Therefore, in order to be more competitive, tourism education should be tailored to meet the needs of the tourism industry in terms of the professional skills required (Lo, 2005). This idea has been extended by Wang (2008) to the dialogue between the tourism industry and tourism education for the design of tourism curriculum in compliance with the tourism industry needs that will contribute to the development of the tourism industry. In Latvia Donina and Luka (2014) concluded that qualitative cooperation of tourism education with industry is essential and will benefit all stakeholders involved. Therefore, the first step in the task of constructing a competitive tourism education system must be its management, based on identifying the needs and expectations of the different stakeholders involved in the system - the employers, the educated and the educators.

Furthermore, tourism as a fast growing sector of market economy requires innovations and technology development. That’s why creativity is an important aspect for tourism development (Richards, 2014). Creative specialists are in high demand on the tourism labour market because they can generate new ideas and technologies, bring them to the market and implement them in the workplace, and which is able to adapt to technological and structural changes across society (OECD, 2015). In particular, issues regarding the sustainability of creativity within a system cannot be separated from the role of education, which is not always integrated with the players and the dynamics of the territory to which it refers, although it is always a critical factor for the territory’s economic and competitive development (Minguzzi & Presenza, 2012). So, topicality of the development of creativity and innovation-related skills beyond domain-specific skills especially in business and tourism education has been stressed by O’Neal and Runco (2016).

Thus, Latvian tourism industry lacks innovation performance and as shown in previous studies (Chlaidze, Utinane-Sukharevska & Linde, 2008; Dombrovsky, 2009; Luka & Donina, 2012, 2014, Kiralova, 2014; Rampersad & Patel, 2014) the fostering of employability and creativity related skills in education doesn’t meet the industry needs. The purpose of the current research is studying the perceptions on creativity and factors influencing its development among tourism higher education stakeholders: students, employers and educators. These surveys aimed to investigate the creativity enhancement level in tourism higher education and its conformity with employers’ creativity expectances and tourism higher education students’ and educators’ beliefs and opinions about creativity within the tourism higher education. 

Method

This study applied triangulation process which increases validity by incorporating several viewpoints and methods. In the social sciences, it refers to the combination of two or more theories, data sources, methods or investigators in one study of a single phenomenon (Collis & Hassey, 2009). Data triangulation has been used for verification the data collected from students, employers and educators. Three surveys have been conducted applying both qualitative and quantitative methods. After having collected the data, qualitative techniques were used for qualitative data analysis and quantitative methods for quantitative data analysis (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2009). Students’ survey is aimed at detecting the factors for creativity evaluation, test them and provide implications for further research. Except general information, the questionnaire consisted of three parts: importance of creativity in tourism industry, creativity enhancement and students’ self-evaluation. The questionnaire was randomly distributed both personally and electronically from 5 February till 5 December 2016 among students of tourism programs (EQF level 6, 7 programs) in Turiba University. 218 completed questionnaires were collected. The sample was composed by local (58.1%) and international students (41.9%) studying Tourism and Hospitality Management (54.8%), Event and Leisure Management (16.1%) and Strategic Tourism Management (29.1%) programs. Educators’ survey consists of two parts. For the first part a questionnaire-based survey was conducted in order to answer the following questions: 1) How important the creativity in non-art education programs is; 2) How creativity is encouraged there; 3) How creativity in education influence the innovative performance of the industry. The questionnaire was distributed among the educators of Turiba University. Questionnaires were distributed both personally and electronically from March 2015 till May 2016. The response rate was 87% and 48 filled in questionnaires were collected. The sample was composed by 19 lecturers, 3 assistant professors, 2 associate professors and 9 professors. For the second part in-depth interviews with 7 tourism educators from Turiba University, Baltic International Academy and ISMA were applied from November 2016 till January 2017. During employer survey 15 managers from the microenterprises engaged in Latvian tourism industry were interviewed during December 2015 – December 2016. Interviewees were open for communication and for detailed discussion. Notes have been taken during the interviews. The interview guide comprises 10 items, grouped in three themes: 1) creativity and competitiveness, 2) qualified personnel, 3) management. Quantitative data were analysed applying SPSS software (descriptive and inferential statistics), qualitative data – applying content analysis (Saunders, et.al., 2009).

Expected Outcomes

The first relationship between all three sources was found regarding the importance of creativity attributes for operation in tourism. On average the evaluation given by the students of the importance of creativity is high (4. 018). It correlates with the evaluation done by educators. The majority of them rated creativity as important (48.5%) and very important (36.4%). Tourism educators evaluated it almost two times higher (mean rank = 22.65) than the others (mean rank = 13.33). Employers also had the same opinion about creativity especially applied to everyday practice. Some differences were found regarding several creativity attributes. Communication was highly evaluated by students (mean 4.7419) and educators. But employers haven’t paid more attention to this attribute. But regarding other three attributes the opinions of students coincided with employers. They are Customer Orientation (mean 4.709), Motivation (mean 4.5806), and Applying Creativity (mean 4.5161). While educators had different opinion and stressed the importance of Synthesis and Critical Thinking. The next part of the evaluation is connected with the enhancement of creativity attributes in the programs the students studied. The average results of this evaluation given by students are closer to high than medium (3.79) which is higher than the medium level given by educators (78.8%) and especially higher than the low evaluation done by employers. But analysis of data collected from students shows that some attributes enhanced very low. The main differences between opinions of employers and educators are about the role of education in the creativity enhancement in the industry. Work experience in this case is much more appreciated by the employers because solving creative problems collectively in organizations relies on connecting past experiences to the problems of the current situations. In general employers also expressed their suggestions about enhancement of more practical and operational skills in higher education.

References

Chlaidze, V., Utinane-Sukharevska, I., Linde, I. (2008). Tourism Education Quality Standards and Higher education in Latvia. Information Technologies, Management and Society, 1 (1), 67–71 Collis, J., Hussey, R. (2009). Business Research. A Practical Guide for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cunningham, S. D. (2013), Hidden Innovation: Policy, Industry and the Creative Sector, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane and Lexington Books, http://eprints.qut.edu.au/57654. Dombrovsky, V. (2009). Is anything wrong with higher education in Latvia?, Baltic Journal of Economics, 9(2) , 5-24 Donina, A., Luka, I. (2014). The Compliance of Tourism Education with Industry Needs in Latvia. European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation. EJTHR Tourism Research, 5(3), 91-120 European Union (2015). Labor market shortages in the European Union. Online, available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/studies Kiralova, A. (2014). New Trends in Tourism - a Challenge for Modernization of Tourism Higher Education in the Czech Republic, Skyline Business Journal, 10 (1), 1-8 Lo, A. (2005). The past, present, and future of hospitality and tourism higher education in Hong Kong. In: C.H. Hsu (Eds), Global tourism higher education: past, present, and future. NY: The Haworth Hospitality Press. Luka, I., Donina, A. (2012). Challenges of tourism education: Conformity of tourism curriculum to business needs. Academica Turistica. Tourism @ Innovation Journal, 5 (1), 85-101 Minguzzi, A., Presenza, A. (2012). Destination building. A strategic approach to the sustainable development of a tourism destination. In: Alfonso Morvillo. Advances in tourism studies. p. 471-489, Milano:McGrow-Hill O’Neal, I. C., Runco, M. A. (2016). National Association for Elementary School Principals’ (NAESP) Principal: Special Supplement sponsored by Crayola, 20-23 OECD. (2015) OECD Innovation Strategy 2015 and Agenda for Policy Action. Online, available at https://www.oecd.org/sti/OECD-Innovation-Strategy-2015-CMIN2015-7.pdf Rampersad, G., Patel, F. (2014). Creativity as a desirable graduate attribute: Implications for curriculum design and employability, Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education, 15 (1), 1-11 Richards, G. (2014). Tourism and the Creative industries. Online, available at https://www.academia.edu/7768353/Tourism_and_the_Creative_Industries Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2009) Research methods for business students, 5th edition. Edinburgh: Pearson Education Wang. J. (2008). Is tourism education meeting the needs of the tourism industry? Thesis submitted at the University of Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia. Online, available at http://www.canberra.edu.au/researchrepository/file/1d7eef38-6d47-552b-673e-adb17f0c721a/1/full_text.pdf WTTC (2015). Global Talent Trends and Issues for the Travel & Tourism Sector.

Author Information

Kamila Perederenko (presenting / submitting)
Turiba University
Business Administration
Riga

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