Introduction
Perhaps, the first formal college for providing higher education in Tourism and Hospitality sector had been established in Switzerland in 1893, named as Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne. Later, Cornell University of United States of America (USA) started their undergraduate degree program in 1922 (Barrows and Bosselman 1999). However, tourism and hospitality education and research remain comparatively a recent phenomenon in Bangladesh. The very first institution for tourism learning has been established in 1974 as National Hotel and Tourism Training Institute (NHTTI). NHTTI was established under the authority of Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation (BPC), which is an autonomous body functioning under the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism. This institute offers courses to ensure trained personnel for hotel and tourism industry. NHTTI started a 2-year long diploma course in hotel management in 1994. The institute also provides the job training for BPC employees and arrange special seminar, workshop related to tourism development. Following the footprints of NHTTI, tertiary level educational institutions started offering different programs in Tourism and Hospitality Education in Bangladesh. The tertiary institutions or more specifically Universities adopted tourism education mostly within the purview of ‘Business Studies’. Accordingly, departments were opened under the Faculty of Business Studies across a number of Universities. Among the public Universities in Bangladesh, University of Dhaka played the pioneering role and opened ‘Tourism and Hospitality Management’ department. The Department started offering Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) as well as Master of Business Administration (MBA) in 2007. The primary objective of the programs was to produce skilled manpower and competent graduates to meet the ever-growing domestic as well as global demand of the tourism and hospitality sector. Since tourism is a labor-intensive sector, there is high demand world-wide for professional degree in this sector.
Using an exploratory research approach, this paper outlines the history and nature of tourism education, current state of tourism education and research in Bangladesh, and the issues of challenges to promote tourism education in Bangladesh.
Nature of Tourism Education and Research
With the rapid growth trend of travel and tourism sector all over the world in the post-modern era (Rahman and Shahid 2012), an increasing demand of human resources becomes obvious. Correspondingly, various institutions across the world came forward to cater tourism and hospitality education . Tourism education started as a development of technical or vocational schools in Europe. These schools emphasised on training in core competencies such as hospitality, hotel management, and different sorts of business management skills (Butler 1999; Morgan 2004). For this reason, a number of establishments including departments of travel and tourism, institutions of higher education , and technical schools emerged (Butler 1999). While these programs meet actual needs in training and education , there have been discussions on the proper place of such programmes. Debates over tourism programs at universities appear to centre on the balance between vocational and academic focus. Tourism courses in higher education are often referred to as vocational (Busby 2001) with educators focusing on producing skilled and knowledgeable managerial manpower for the industry. This emphasis has somehow limited the broader value or meaning of tourism education.
Much of the debate surrounding the standardization of curricula content has been observed as the influencing forces of “McDonaldization” in which the higher educational institutions continuously adapt similar contents rather than responding to the industry needs (Ritzer 1998). It has been claimed that most of the tourism and hospitality courses have adopted vocational and managerial objectives which reflect business management in curriculum (Cooper and Westlake 1998; Tribe 2002; Evans 1992). If tourism education is to develop and continually meet the needs of an expanding and increasingly differentiated global industry, then program developers have to seek new ways of ensuring that graduates are able to demonstrate a breadth of management skills and have the ability to add value to organizations operating in the tourism environment.
Tourism in not an academic discipline rather it is considered as a field of study by its own right (Tribe 2002). The distinction between tourism, leisure, recreation, and hospitality is blurred and all share a common concern of business in every aspect. With business foci, “holistic competence” is much desired in tourism higher education than academic-professional competence (López-Bonilla and López-Bonilla 2014). Such a view perhaps equally highlights the “humanistic or liberal” approach of Tribe (2002). To integrate these concepts, Dale and Robinson (2001) identified three domains that should emerge within tourism education. The first domain is about “generic degree” that offers interdisciplinary skills required for a broad understanding of the tourism industry. Specialist options might be studied but there is no particular area, which is given specific attention. The second domain focuses “functional degree” that equips students with necessary functional expertise in a particular area of tourism. Due to the service-oriented nature of the tourism industry, often specialist skills are required in the areas of information technology, marketing, planning, and so on. Finally, a “market- or product-based degree” focuses on the nature and development of particular niche products and markets, which require specialist knowledge and expertise for their effective delivery.
Research areas for tourism and hospitality management
Functional areas | Specific focuses |
|---|---|
Marketing | Customer satisfaction and loyalty, service quality, marketing mix (product, place, price, promotion), segmentation, target marketing, branding, and market research |
Finance | Asset management, buyouts, profitability, economic forecasting, financial analysis and management, valuation techniques, financial statements, and cash flows |
Administration | Strategic planning, management styles, accounting, organizational structure, crisis management, information, communication, and environmental trends |
Operations | Inventory management and purchasing, facility management, management contracts, liabilities and legal issues, safety and security, productivity, sanitation, energy and waste management, menu engineering and planning, food cost management, and quality control |
MIS/IT | Technological advancements, information gathering and analysis, development, and innovations |
Human resource | Employee selection and training, turnover, job satisfaction, employee attitude, sexual harassment, labour costs, empowerment, employee benefits, organizational behaviour, employer/employee liabilities, and workforce diversity |
Apart from the functional areas as mentioned above, Kim et al. (2018) identify eight more subject areas on which tourism and hospitality researches have been widely concentrated. These areas include teaching and education , environment, methodological focus, region or destination , strategic management, theories and models, specific sectors highlighting alternative forms of tourism such as sustainable tourism, and finally principal research trends and themes. In recent days, tourism crisis and disaster management research also hold a great attention (Jiang et al. 2019). This area gains a significant attention with the increasing impacts of Covid- 19, a global pandemic (widely spread-out in February 2020) that literally affects every corner of the world and reinforces to reassess all the statistics in relation to global travel and tourism.
Research Method
A qualitative research approach has been followed to conduct this research . The nature of this research is exploratory in which the fundamental objective is to compile and put forward the general tourism and hospitality education and research progress in Bangladesh. Data have been collected using both primary and secondary techniques. Within the secondary method, a desk-based literature review has been conducted to assemble a wide range of published documents. The primary source however includes expert opinion in which views of eight experts in total consulted. The experts were selected based on Patton’s (2002) ‘purposeful stratified sampling’. Out of eight experts, two were selected from the National Tourism Organizations (NTOs), one from industry, two Professors from Private Universities, and the rest three Professors from public Universities. This technique was used in particular to overcome the limitations of availability of relevant data (Sheldon and Var 1985). A “content analysis” technique has been employed to analyze data to derive conclusion (Santos 2005).
Tourism Education and Research : European Perspective
Since the end of the 1970s, rapid growth and development of new destinations have increasingly eroded the market share of the Old Continent, thus bringing concern among tourism operators. Consequently, hoteliers and travel agents have been forced to have a better understanding of the environmental forces that have been shaping the tourism and travel industry and have turned the hospitality market into a highly competitive-one. A solid background in hospitality management education has become a critical requisite for managers in order to succeed in the complex and fierce market which exists in hospitality and tourism arenas. In the European scenario, the demand for a multi-functional qualified manager is a necessity in hotels since it is rare to find middle management assisting the general manager in his/her duties. The European universities were unable to respond to this need and to supply hospitality and tourism management programs, a variety of new institutions have initiated higher level courses in this domain. Bonneau (1990) claimed that higher education in hospitality and tourism in Europe was only considered as a fruitful business by those new institutions. They exploited the fact that numerous employment opportunities were offered by the hospitality and tourism market and students were attending the expensive programs hoping to find a good position in the industry.
Scenario of tourism education in some prominent countries in Europe
Countries | Overall scenario |
|---|---|
Germany | The tourism specialization was developed within the Fachhochschulen, which confers bachelors’ degrees after the completion of eight semesters of classes. Within the colleges of geography, political economics, and business administration, hospitality and tourism courses are offered as a specialization for one or two semesters. |
Switzerland | It is one of the first European countries to develop tourism courses within business colleges. Bern University has a Department of Tourism Economics in the College of Commerce and Economics. |
France | The tourism specialization by French universities offers 2-, 3- and 4-year programs in various locations. French hospitality and tourism programs are more and more geared toward 4-year bachelor degrees that tend to prepare students for managerial jobs in the industry. |
Italy | Italy began offering 3-year associate degrees for “Tourism Professional Operators” and in “Economics of Tourism” in 1993. Two bachelors’ degrees have been offered since 1994. Within 2 years-1993 to 1994, the hospitality and tourism programs offered by the Italian universities grew from two to twelve. The programs are developed within the colleges of political sciences, commerce and economy, education, and languages. |
Poland | Among the European countries of the ex-communist bloc, Poland began offering two Bachelors’ Degrees in hotel management in 1992. In addition, the Polish government, supported by the Commission of the European Communities (CEC), has created a 2-year tourism management program entitled “Programme for the Development of Tourism in Poland” and is technically maintained through the consultancy of a Spanish company (Airey 1994). |
Bulgaria | It has offered courses in hospitality and tourism since the middle 1960s. Different from what was offered at that time by the majority of the European countries, Bulgaria conceived hospitality and tourism courses as part of academic programs, offering these studies on university sites. The length of the programs is normally 5 years and offered by higher institutes of economics or at Geography-Geology Departments (Rakadjiyska 1990). |
Tourism programs incorporate practical vocational experience such as internships (Tribe 2001; Busby 2003), student work experiences (Leslie and Richardson 2000), or a sandwich placement (Busby et al. 1997), and practicums (Ernawati 2003). Such incorporations inherently indicate the interdependency of academic and industry environments. This interdependency of academia and industry typically results in production of employable students. According to Busby (2001), the relatively high employment rate of tourism graduates can be attributed to acquisition of useful skills and practical experience in the industry as a result of curriculum. Practitioners may also have influence on courses such as tourism practitioners in the United Kingdom could exert implicit influence on curriculum content to accommodate vocational as well as intellectual skills (Busby 2001).
Hospitality and tourism have been exclusively considered a capital investment issue in Europe. As a result, education in this sector was initiated to prepare students to meet supply needs of the industry. The European educational structure in tourism, hospitality and related fields have highlighted the operational aspects of the industry for more than a century. In past decades, only hands-on vocational programs were offered in the hospitality and tourism field. The curricula were based on skills-oriented training, and students received a short on-class orientation. Fusca (1977) noted that training should not be separated from formal education in tourism schools. This concept is supported by Kaplan (1982) while investigating job opportunities for hospitality and tourism for former students. A vocational and skill-based program specifies future job opportunities; on the contrary, conceptual programs that confer extended knowledge widens career opportunities.
Tourism Education and Research in Bangladesh: An Operational Viewpoint
Bangladesh is gifted with natural resources and the immense possibilities to develop tourism-based service industry. The country has possessed many natural wonders including few world-heritage sites such as the largest mangrove forest and the longest sea beach in the world. It is a country where hills, rivers and sea meet together to amplify the exquisiteness of the mother earth. To seize this God- gifted opportunity, we must discover creative ways and should try to capitalize it to create a favorable impact in overcoming the current economic downfall caused by unemployment, capital market crises, price hike, trade deficit and so on. According to World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC 2019), Travel and Tourism will account for 154,060,000 jobs directly and this will be an increase of 2.1% per annum over the next 10 years. So, it could be an economic turning point for the country that may create a prospect to employ the surplus labor which is currently causing unemployment leading to socio-economic imbalance. Tourism is a human intensive service sector where efficient human resource development is the must to provide effective management of hosting services to the tourists and to be effective in this area. Subsequently, education and skill in tourism and hospitality is more than essential. Thus, to develop better country image and to create a tourism brand, the country has to establish a clear link among tourism, unemployment, and education .
In Bangladesh, most of the universities are providing ‘generic’ and to some extent ‘functional’ degree. The following subsections exploratively identify and report a general pattern of tourism and hospitality education and research in Bangladesh.
Hierarchy of Programs
The hierarchy of different tourism and hospitality management programs in Bangladesh. (Source: synthesized by the authors)
This is to be noted that a general criterion for enrolment at Diploma and Undergraduate level requires a college (12th Class) degree. Enrolment at the postgraduate level however requires in total 16 years of education indicating completion of a 4-years bachelor degree. Although, such educational achievements fulfil the criterion for enrolment at MPhil or Doctoral program, it is preferable that a student should have a master degree for such programs. Both the MPhil and Doctoral programs are research-oriented. On a gross estimate, the expert views in this research identify that the distribution of overall enrolment may take up to about 67% for diploma programs, 30% for undergraduate programs, and the rest 3% accounts for postgraduate and doctoral programs. These figures clearly indicate that tourism research is not that much a wider practise in Bangladesh rather a diploma degree along with hands-on training is much preferred. This is particularly due to the fact that such a direction is well-linked to the career paths in hospitality industry.
Institutions Offering Tourism and Hospitality Education and Research
At the tertiary level, currently there are six public and fourteen private universities are offering higher education programs in Tourism and Hospitality. Besides, there are five private and one public institution providing short courses and diploma degrees on Tourism and Hospitality Management. Under National university of Bangladesh, there are eight colleges providing honours degree (4 years) on this subject. The authors compile all the relevant institutions providing tourism and hospitality learning opportunities in Bangladesh and present in the following Table.
Institutions providing tourism and hospitality education and research degrees in Bangladesh
Name | Location | Establishment year | Degree provided |
|---|---|---|---|
Public institutions offering tourism and hospitality management degree | |||
University of Dhaka | Dhaka | 2007 | BBA, MBA, MPhil, PhD |
University of Rajshahi | Rajshahi | 2019 | BBA |
Islamic University | Kushtia | 2017 | BBA, MBA, MPhil, PhD |
Pabna University of Science and Technology | Pabna | 2018 | BBA, MBA, MPhil, PhD |
Noakhali Science and Technology University | Noakhali | 2018 | BBA, MBA, MPhil, PhD |
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Science and Technology University | Gopalgonj | 2019 | BBA, MBA, MPhil, PhD |
Private institutions offering tourism and hospitality management degree | |||
Primeasia University | Dhaka | 2010 | BA/BBA, MBA |
Daffodil International University | Dhaka | 2014 | |
International University of Business, Agriculture and Technology | Dhaka | 2017 | |
World University of Bangladesh | Dhaka | 2015 | |
Victoria University of Bangladesh | Dhaka | 2007 | |
European University of Bangladesh | Dhaka | 2018 | |
Cox’s Bazar International University | Chattogram | 2019 | |
Daffodil Institute of IT | Dhaka | 2016 | |
UPDATE college | Dhaka | 2015 | |
IBAIS University | Dhaka | 2016 | |
People’s University of Bangladesh | Dhaka | 2017 | |
Southern University | Dhaka | 2016 | |
Fareast International University | Dhaka | 2016 | |
Leading university | Dhaka | 2019 | |
Institution (Short course/Diploma) | |||
Institute of Tourism and Hospitality Management | Dhaka | 2000 | Diploma |
National Hotel & Tourism Training Institute | Dhaka | 1974 | Diploma |
Regency Hospitality and Tourism Training Institute | Dhaka | 2003 | Short course |
Tony khan Culinary Institute | Dhaka | 2004 | Short course |
Tourism and Hospitality Training Institute | Dhaka | 2002 | Diploma |
ACE Hospitality Training Institute | Dhaka | 2005 | Short course |
Under National University (Honours/BBA Program) | |||
Mohammadpur Central College | Dhaka | 2019 | Honours/BBA |
New Model Degree college | Dhaka | 2018 | |
Mokbul Hossain College | Dhaka | 2018 | |
Siddeswary College | Dhaka | 2019 | |
Habibullah Bahar College | Dhaka | 2017 | |
Sheikh Borhan Uddin College | Dhaka | 2018 | |
Cox’s Bazar City College | Chattogram | 2019 | |
National University, Gazipur | Dhaka | 2017 | |
Mechanisms of Running Schools and Programs
Tourism education largely becomes a part of vocational training in Bangladesh although a rapid progress on conceptual orientations is being noticed in the recent years since many Universities started offering a variety of programs. In those programs, practical learning vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge has been emphasized through collaboration with the industry as well as in-house lab facility development . However, in most of the establishments, shortages of such in-house lab facilities hinder learning opportunities of the students. In this vein, one expert (Professor from a public University) mentioned that “… despite having immense exponential potential, this industry is facing a big mismatch in supply and demand of skilled manpower and we are continuously failing to produce skilled manpower because of the lack of lab facilities with an especial focus on hospitality courses.” Another expert representing another public university added that “we need to reorganize our course-curriculum with a greater focus on industry attachment rather that in-class learning sessions.”
In terms of time duration, a 2-year long diploma course in hotel management is divided into four semesters but for BBA programs it takes 4 years of time divided into 8–12 semesters depending on the curriculum design of respective universities. The universities and institutes both prefer industry attachment that covers the practical engagement of their knowledge through industrial attachment, which is usually offered at the end of last semester for 3–4 months period.
Issues and Challenges for Tourism Education and Research in Bangladesh
From the expert views as well as secondary data sources, a number of issues become apparent that potentially create challenges for tourism and hospitality education and research in Bangladesh. The most common problem of tourism education in Bangladesh is found from the demand side such as the unattractiveness of tourism and hospitality as profession. In this connection, one expert (Professor of a private university) claimed that “common students’ perception about the career in tourism industry is mostly confined within tour guide and hotel boy that come with low packages of wage or incentive”. Another expert (Professor of a public University) added to this observation that “… the typical jobs offered in tourism and hospitality sectors do not carry much social status. It means that from a social stance, we are yet to accept the industry”. This challenge was equally mentioned by the industry expert but the expert also found a slow shift in such mentality in recent years and linked that to the initiation of tourism education at the University level. In addition, the career opportunities from tourism and hospitality background at the domestic level is very limited and the career path is still unclear among the current and future potential professionals. Therefore, the motivation of pursuing tourism education to build a career is comparatively lower than other educational programs in Bangladesh. However, the nature of tourism jobs and social pressures remain common challenges in most of the Asian cultures (Wu 2013).
Apart from the demand side, the supply side of tourism and hospitality education and research in Bangladesh is also experiencing serious problems. The most important one is about the severe deficiency of qualified academicians to impart skill and knowledge on tourism and hospitality, which is again complemented by the limited number of academic institutions offering and developing expertise in this particular field. In those institutions that provide tourism education (mostly private ones), the tuition and certification fees are expensive compared to other academic programs and their respective career opportunities. The expert views added another issue in association with the scarcity of quality academicians, limited accessibilities to the quality resources to update educational and training materials remain a great challenge. Another issue being identified as the absence of academic curriculum on tourism and hospitality education at the primary and secondary level of education in Bangladesh. Such absence along with limited in-house lab opportunities at the tertiary level institutions create the real challenge for “lifelong spiralled approach” of tourism learning (Cuffy et al. 2012).
A typical market economy runs based on the law of demand and supply; the demand of tourism education is low in Bangladesh so as the supply. Although there is immense potential for tourism and hospitality businesses’ opportunities in Bangladesh, the country largely fails to capitalize such opportunities. Most of the experts provided their opinions pointing out the failure of government to perform their due role such as promoting tourism and shaping tourism education and research . On a particular note, absence of national standardization of tourism education is leading the overall systems towards high commercialization and certification business. Moreover, lack of available research fund also discouraging qualified researchers or potential researchers to pursue tourism research that must be facilitated by the government . However, while talking about the goal of producing graduates capable of critical thinking through tourism research orientation in some way contradicts the focus of employability in Bangladesh as discussed above.
Conclusion
This research is only a groundwork for forthcoming studies in the realm of tourism education development in Bangladesh. Tourism is a relatively new field of study that emerged from vocational education in Bangladesh. The nature of tourism education seems to contribute towards tourism pedagogies, driven by business and economic considerations. At the same time, this makes tourism education susceptible to social manipulation by these same forces. However, most discussions by educators and developers of tourism curricula tend to create a balance between a vocational and an academic focus. The discussion is often merely about efficient and effective transferability of school curricula to daily operations, overlooking the value of learning and the intangible impacts of tourism. In order to line up the discussion, this paper has gone through the tourism education and research from European perspective. It is found that there are three major programs offered in Bangladesh aligning tourism and hospitality education namely diploma, undergraduate, and postgraduate. There are numerous schemes offered under these programs. The programs are offered at tertiary level educational institutions as well as at the government agencies. The supply and demand side of tourism education and research become fraught with a number of challenges including low quality nature of jobs, unwelcoming social status, limited qualified academicians and institutes, faulty course curriculum, limited accessibility to the materials, and failure of government to play its functional roles. This is expected that future research will more specifically address these issues along with possible mechanisms to overcome those challenges.