Abstract:

The hospitality and tourism industry is a key driver in the global economy creating 109 million jobs and contributing $2.3 trillion (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2017). This equates to 4% of GDP, 230,000 jobs, 8.7 billion revenue and 2 billion in exchequer taxes, with a 73% occupancy rate in hotels resulting in part from 8.97 million in overseas visits to Ireland in 2017 (Irish Tourism Industry Confederation, 2017; Irish Hotel Federation, 2018). The industry predicts a continued, yet conservative growth in hospitality and tourism into 2018 offsetting threats such as Brexit (Britain Exits Europe) with diversification into other markets.

The landscape of hospitality and tourism higher education as a result has had to adapt and change to creatively meet with the needs of both industry expansion and change, and incoming new demographics within the academies. Internationalization and advanced technology are key drivers of change. This along with new demographics of employees and students alike, such as Generation Z entering into employment and Generation Y returning to education, results in a shift in employee dynamics with industry seeking competent and agile employees able to lead and innovate.

This paper presents and evaluates trends and drivers for change in the hospitality sector under three key headings. These are consumer trends, technological trends and the global business environment trends and drivers of change.

The paper makes recommendations for the development of cutting edge hospitality management educators and programmes and suggests that the traditional hotel management programmes will need to be developed to address the trends identified in this research. Educators will have to re-evaluate their programmes and while embracing the traditional offerings of management and finance, they will need to provide more creative choices and developments in curricula.

Colleges will need to offer niche streams to students who wish to follow a career in hotel management but with an expertise as identified. The traditional programmes with front office, food and beverage, rooms division and conference management are still important, however, in addition to these, hotel management programmes will need to offer a wider range of specialisms such as health and wellness, sports management, event management, leisure management, cruise line travel and tourism, sustainable and environmental management, culinary arts, culture and arts, fashion and history, and lifestyle management as part of the curricula.

Keywords:

Hospitality Education Sector, Drivers or Change, Consumer Trends, Technological Trends, Global Business Environment Trends.