REPORTS OF PREVIOUS CONFERENCES

ATHE 2005 Conference

Conference report to follow

This conference sought to analyse three key issues that are central to the future of tourism higher education. These were:

• Teaching and Learning
• Research and Knowledge Transfer
• Recruitment and Marketing.

The conference was organised around a mixture of keynote presentations, discussion forums and research or practice papers.

Leasowe Castle offered style, comfort and elegance in a tranquil setting with 6 acres of grounds overlooking Leasowe Golf Course and the sea. It is 9 miles from the centre of Liverpool and 12 miles from the airport. The programme included a complimentary coach tour of Liverpool (focussing on its opportunities for educational tourism) and was kindly hosted by the Mersey Partnership.

ATHE 2004 Conference - Critical Issues in Tourism Education

This was a joint international conference organised by:

Association for Tourism in Higher Education (ATHE)
Leisure and Tourism Education Research Centre (LaTERC), BCUC
Learning and Teaching Support Network for Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism
Association for Tourism and Leisure Education (ATLAS)

It was held at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College (BCUC), Missenden Abbey, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, UK 1st - 3rd December 2004

Keynote Speakers were: Professor David Airey, University of Surrey
Professor Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, University of London

The conference was Chaired by Professor John Tribe on behaf of ATHE, BCUC, LTSN, ATLAS & the conference organising committee

2004 Conference Report

Association for Tourism in Higher Education Annual Conference, 1st - 3rd December 2004, Great Missenden , UK

The annual conference of the Association for Tourism in Higher Education (ATHE), co-hosted by Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College (BCUC), the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the Association for Tourism and Leisure Education (ATLAS), took place in the beautiful setting of the UK's Buckinghamshire countryside between the 1 st and 3 rd of December 2004. ATHE, the British leading subject association for tourism in higher education, was originally created in 1993 and since then become an important outlet for discussion for tourism educators and institutions offering tourism programmes in the country. Although the association's annual meetings have traditionally been focused on discussing the major issues faced by its members, the 2004 conference was approached differently, with academic presentations playing a key role in the conference programme. The main theme was 'Critical Issues in Tourism Education' and it attracted delegates from all over the world, including presenters from Australia , Brazil , Croatia , Finland , Slovenia , Trinidad and Tobago , Uganda and the UK .

The first day of the conference was dedicated to social activities, with a walk through the Chilterns Hills during the day and drinks and dinner at night. These initial activities gave participants the chance to meet their peers and to strengthen their networks. Also, registration took place in order to have the programme running smoothly from the beginning on the following day.

Day two was initiated by the welcoming of representatives of the co-hosting institutions (Prof. Chris Kemp � BCUC, Nina Becket � HEA, and Prof. John Tribe � ATHE). Ronald Barnett, Professor of Higher Education in the Institute of Education of the University of London , was the first keynote speaker of the conference. Talking about ' Critical Issues in (Tourism) Higher Education', Prof. Barnett presented the picture of higher education in the UK and overseas and built a bridge to the particular issues related to tourism higher education. The rest of the morning was dedicated to the presentation of academic papers. Later, on the afternoon, the second keynote speaker of the day, David Airey (Professor of Tourism Management at the University of Surrey ) presented a set of questions and possible future scenarios for tourism higher education, entitled 'From Here to Uncertainty'. The remaining academic activities of the day were paper presentations and the ATHE members' meeting. Further opportunity for networking was available in the evening during bar drinks, dinner and a Jazz Quintet presentation.

The last day of the conference commenced with the final paper presentations, followed by the concluding keynote speaker � Brian Wheeller (Visiting Professor of Tourism at NHTV Breda University of Professional Education), who discussed the possibilities of using audio-visual material for teaching tourism. An animated film on tourism impacts and several pictures were shown to the conference delegates in conjunction with the proposed approaches used by Prof. Wheeller and by a sample of students' responses to the alternative teaching methods applied. Afterwards, Prof. John Tribe closed the event in the same informal way the whole conference occurred, by showing pictures of the three days and thanking all for their presence and participation.

Overall, the conference was very successful in the way it gathered tourism educators not only from the UK but also from several different countries. The academic discussions generated by the presentations were of a very high level and allowed comparisons of the provision of tourism higher education in different parts of the world. Besides, the informality of the event and the time allocated to social activities permitted the strengthening of networking, making the participation in the conference a very worthwhile time investment.

During registration, delegates were given a book of abstracts along with promotional material from co-hosts and sponsors. Subsequently, full papers will be published as a conference proceedings book edited by Dr. Eugenia Wickens, who was responsible for receiving submissions and organising the presentations. Further information about the conference proceedings can be obtained with the ATHE secretariat ( secretary@athe.org.uk).

Sergio Leal
PhD Student at the University of Surrey
Secretary of the Association for Tourism in Higher Education

2003 Conference Report

Survival- Is Your Institution Tough Enough to survive the Tourism Jungle?

Conference Report
Doncaster Castle View Conference Centre: Earth Centre
4-5th December 2003

ATHE's Annual Conference for 2003 took place for the second year at the Doncaster Earth Centre. The previous year's conference had included 'ice-breaking' activities such as climbing walls and zip wires as well as the academic businesses. This year's agenda had a broad range of issues to address and, therefore, passed on the opportunity to involve members in these fairly hazardous (yet amusing) activities! The conference was designed to offer all delegates with an overview of the key issues which are critical to Tourism' future development and health in Higher Education, focusing on the quality issues surrounding curriculum and research strategies. The two days were divided into 'Missions'.

The three 'missions' collectively covered just about every issue that Tourism academics are likely to be facing within our institutions and more broadly, as an academic community. Attendance at the conference was encouraging and it was particularly pleasing to see representatives from institutions that were relatively new members of ATHE. Feedback after the conference has been wholly positive and thanks go to all those who gave presentations and to those who helped in organising the event. The following 'resumes' offer an overview of the key issues discussed and debated and may well form the basis of future discussions at ATHE Executive Meetings and conferences.

Mission 1: Learning and Teaching

Issues in Teaching and Learning
Cliff Allan-Director LTSN
Dr. Marion Stuart-Hoyle - CCCUC

Cliff Allen opened this first mission, outlining the national teaching and learning agenda and the associated implications for Tourism. Dr. Marion Stuart-Hoyle followed with some of the key curriculum development issues facing tourism in 2003, commencing with the 'stretching' of the Tourism curriculum as the subject is now delivered from GCSE to PhD level and the associated implications for depth and breadth of study.

Tourism Studies: HE in FE
Professor David Botterill-University of Wales Institute, Cardiff

This presentation reported a study undertaken for LTSN HLST by Professor David Botterill, Dr Eleri Jones, Dr Claire Haven and Sara Black. During the launch of LTSN HLST it transpired that there were high levels of interest from FEI staff but it was felt that the network should concentrate on higher education in HEIs for the initial three years of the network. Insufficient level of awareness of HE in FE was recognised by the Steering Committee of LTSN HLST in respect of a number of issues: low awareness of FEI issues by HEI staff; potential for poor student progression FE to HE; low awareness of scale of HE in FE; anticipation of Foundation Degrees; FEIs being good at non-traditional recruitment; differences in student experience and quality assurance issues.

Mission 2: Research and Scholarship

Mike Crang- (University of Durham) Editor of Tourist Studies

The presentation commenced with the reasons behind the launch of the journal 'Tourist Studies'. It emerged that the journal had grown out of dissatisfaction with existing tourism journals that perhaps focused too much on the 'management' aspect of the subject. Tourist Studies was launched to offer a home for different types of research outputs, such as photo essays and translated pieces.

University Research Strategies
Rory McClellan-University of Strathclyde: Tourism Research within the Scottish Hotel School

The presentation focused on where Tourism fits into the research strategy for the Scottish Hotel School. Five core issues were central to the discussion:
" location of tourism studies in university research groupings: business and management; social sciences; sport?
" rating of Hospitality and Tourism Journals
" uncertainty over the next RAE
" current research strategies at Strathclyde
" fragmentation of tourism & hospitality research

Professor Peter Mason-University of Luton

Peter's presentation reviewed the 1996 and 2001 RAE submissions made by the University of Luton. In 2001, Luton entered 'Tourism' separately within UoA 43 'Business and Management' and was one of only three universities to adopt this strategy. The strategy paid off as Luton achieved a '4' rating.

Mission 3: Knowledge Expansion and Transfer

Tourism Knowledge Scotland (TKS)
Rory McClellan - University of Strathclyde

This initiative began as an informal grouping of tourism researchers within higher education in Scotland. It has evolved, with the assistance of the Scottish Enterprise network and VisitScotland into an organisation with input from around 15 higher education institutions, with the core aim of communicating research knowledge to the tourism sector in Scotland. It represents a co-ordinated approach to add value to research activity and provide mechanisms to facilitate better collaboration and communication between institutions.

Critical Incidents in Tourism Studies
Dr.Marion Stuart-Hoyle-Canterbury Christ Church University College (CCCUC)

For the last ten years the National Liaison Group for Tourism in Higher Education (NLG) and now ATHE have campaigned to ensure that the key issues facing the subject are aired and debated in the national arena. Tourism has developed against a backdrop of continual change in higher education. The Guidelines series (1-11) have tracked many of the challenges that Tourism has faced and the key purpose of this presentation was to bring together all these issues and challenges and to offer a personal reflection on those that had exercised the minds of the tourism academic community in recent years. The presentation opened by highlighting the nature of the contented, committed Tourism academic community, for the most part, coping with the implications of policy change at institutional and national level. In addition, the community has, through ATHE and NLG, responded to the call for consultation over key policies such as the most recent RAE (see Special Report-Roberts Review) and the White Paper on Higher Education. We might not always feel that consultation has resulted in us making a positive difference when key policy making is taking place in HE, but ATHE has felt it important to take up these opportunities to make the views of the subject community heard.
The presentation reminded delegates of the well-documented growth of the Tourism programmes in the last ten years, mirrored by increasing number of PhD completions and Tourism journals. At the same time, it was noted that each institution offering Tourism now has to compete more keenly for a decreasing pool of applicants, raising concerns about the quality of undergraduates. The three key external or 'system-wide' factors which were developed during the presentation as having had a key influence on Tourism' development were Subject Benchmarks, Subject Review, and the RAE. Discussion then moved to what were described as the 'new vocational subject' influences, that is to say, those that were indicative of relatively new subjects like Tourism. This focused on the nature of the committed subject community, its willingness, and even keenness to teach across a broad range of courses, the almost immediate impact of research on teaching and the tendency for the community to try to, or even have to defend the subject at an institutional or disciplinary level. The presentation concluded that the tourism academic community perhaps needs to pull together during the next few years, to ensure that it continues to be heard at a national level on policy issues and to maintain control over how exactly the subject develops at curriculum level.

Dr Keith Wilkes, December 2003

2001 Conference Report

Shaping the future of your subject association. Annual conference of the Association of Tourism in Higher Education (ATHE); 6 & 7 November 2001. Hilton Bromsgrove, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England.

The annual conference of the Association of Tourism in Higher Education (ATHE) was held at the Hilton Bromsgrove, Bromsgrove, UK, on the 6 and 7 of November. The conference was chaired by David Botterill (University of Wales and Chair of ATHE) and Peter Mason (University of Luton) and its content covered the following three teaching and learning themes: a) Technology support and Widening Participation; b) eSources and eDevelopments; and c) Tourism Education - the state of play. During the two-day conference, more than 30 delegates representing the major UK institutions offering tourism and hospitality higher education (HE) degrees were brought together to discuss the current trends and future challenges in tourism and hospitality HE. On the second day delegates were joined by the Chair of the Leisure Studies Association, Cara Aitchinson (University of Gloucestershire)
This mixed audience guaranteed that all perspectives-embracing debates and lively discussions were developed.

Without doubt, this conference proved to be a big, varied and excellently organised and administered two days event that offered delegates great opportunities for networking with colleagues and debating current issues. The conference consisted of presentations followed by discussions that took place mainly during the first day, while in the second day delegates had the opportunity to debate current issues challenging tourism HE by participating in one of the three concurrent workshop discussions. The conference was opened by David Botterill who very warmly welcomed delegates and gave an overall introduction to the conference theme and aim.

The technology support theme was represented by Stephen Hewitt (University of Birmingham) and widening participation by Helen Price (a freelance educational consultant). Stephen Hewitt introduced and demonstrated the functionality of ALTIS. ALTIS is the name of a project aiming at the development of a Resource Development Internet Network and subject gateway for Leisure, Tourism and Sport. The content quality of ALTIS would be guaranteed by the recruitment of specialists within UK academia and affiliated organisations that would be assigned to select and describe Internet resources relating to hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism. Although ALTIS is not yet fully functional, educators and researchers are encouraged to visit its Website (www.altis.ac.uk) and provide their feedback on the content and services that ALTIS may need to consider to offer in the future.

Helen Price clearly explained the aims, current experience and potential impact of foundations degrees in tourism and hospitality education. Foundation degrees are part of the UK Government's aim to ensure wider participation in HE, i.e. the 50% of 18-30 year olds experience HE in 2005. In this vein, foundation degrees provide a stepping stone either from Further Education or directly from employment into HE. The four distinctive characteristics of Foundation Degrees are the following: 1) employer involvement; 2) development of skills and knowledge; 3) application of skills in the workplace; 3) credit accumulation and transfer; and 4) progression - to an honours degree and/or within work. However, the latter issue raised strong concerns amongst delegates regarding the impact of Foundation Degrees in HE in tourism. For more information regarding foundation degrees, delegates were referred to the following Internet links:

http://www.brookes.ac.uk/ltsn.
http://www.foundationdegree.pwcglobal.com.
http://www.foundationdegree.org.uk.
http://www.htf.org.uk.

The session on eSources and eDevelopments featured two speakers. First, Dimitrios Buhalis (University of Surrey) presented the new postgraduate degree in eTourism developed and offered at the University of Surrey since September 2001. After stressing the increasing importance and impact of ICT advances in the tourism and hospitality industry, Dimitrios Buhalis explained how the curriculum design and the learning outcomes of the MSc in eTourism were developed in order to address such challenges. Specifically, by drawing upon three subject areas namely Business-Management-Marketing, Travel-Tourism-Hospitality and ICT, eTourism aims at developing students' abilities and skills on using ICT for developing competitive strategies and supporting business operations. However, it was predicted that ultimately ICT applications would become so embedded in tourism businesses' operations and strategy that ICT applications would be regarded as business as usual.

Moreover, after summarising the advantages of online learning for all three players namely universities, educators and students, Roger Vaughan (University of Bournemouth) presented and explained the functionality of "Tonyversity". Tonyversity is the name of an e-learning platform developed and used to complement the traditional classroom instruction delivery of Roger's and his colleague's (Tony) modules. The platform is designed based on the theoretical underpinnings of constructivist learning and aims at creating a student-centred learning environment that enables students to search, share and create knowledge by interacting with peers and instructors. Consequently, the platform is argued to significantly contribute to the development of students' information literacy and knowledge management skills, which are becoming increasingly indispensable qualities for graduates entering the nowadays knowledge based economy and society. Tonyveristy is accessible at www.tonyversity.bournemouth.ac.uk and www.legacylinks.org

On the other hand, workshop discussions aimed at instilling and fostering discussions concerning the current issues and challenges facing HE in tourism. These were preceded by two very related presentations. Marion Stuart (Christchurch College Canterbury) presented the major findings of her recently conducted PhD primary research investigating the factors influencing curriculum design in tourism HE. Key issues revealed from this study were reported to include: the changing nature and lower quality of students mainly due to the wider participation and the proliferation of institutions offering tourism degrees; lack of strategic vision and status; two faced curriculum, i.e. the increasing gap between what is supposed to be delivered and what is actually being delivered; the increasing debate between academic and vocational degrees and the avoidance of overtly vocational courses. Lyn Bibbings (Oxford Brookes University and LTSN representative) gave an overview of the LTSN's learning and teaching support services namely: a) the pedagogic research fund 2001-2002; b) opportunities for developing subject specialists; c) publishing and communicating opportunities in the new peer-reviewed online Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sports and Tourism Education and in the LINK, i.e. the LTSN's newsletter (contributions for both were sought); and d) the call for proposals and express of interest for participating in the ESRC-TLRP Phase III research project. More information can be obtained from the LTSN's website at www.brookes.ac.uk/ltsn.

During the workshop discussions, delegates were challenged to debate and identify potential ways of addressing emerging trends in tourism HE that were clustered in three key theme areas. The latter were identified after consolidating the opinions of a great number of educators investigated prior to the conference. In particular, the three key areas of major concern for tourism HE were identified to be: 1) the widening participation referring to issues associated with the impact of foundation degrees, the recruitment process and quality of students; 2) the status of tourism in HE referring mainly to the respectability of the subject and lecturer commitment; and 3) the job prospects of tourism graduates that are greatly affected by current trends in the supply and demand of courses, the value of tourism qualifications and the impact of post foundation degrees. Workshop findings and debates were consolidated in a session chaired by Peter Mason (University of Luton). Overall, in order to address these three challenges, it was concluded that the following activities should be sought: educators development; enhance the status and respectability of tourism subject area by aiming at developing and supporting peer networks (e.g. TOLERN, LTSN), publishing in main stream journals, identifying and targeting key tourism players for pursuing research; increase and support students' employability.

Information about the Association of Tourism in Higher Education (ATHE), its activities and future events can be found at www.athe.ac.org.

Marianna Sigala
The Scottish Hotel School
University of Strathclyde
94 Cathedral Street,
Glasgow, G4 0IG
Scotland, UK
M.Sigala@strath.ac.uk

2000 Conference:

• This conference was the first joint CHME/ATHE conference. Its subjects were Research and Working Together.
• David Botterill and Conrad Lashley presented papers on the current position of research in Tourism and Hospitality
• A panel consisting of Chris Gratton (Chair of RAE panel 69), Peter Jones (Member of RAE panel 43) and John Rogers (RAE Manager) discussed the issues of RAE 2001 and Beyond
• David Airey, Clare Gould (British Tourist Authority), Brian Hay (Scottish Tourist Board) and Ivan Bishop (DCMS) presented papers on Tourism Research: Uses and users
• The LTSN gave a presentation
• Ways for ATHE and CHME to work together were explored.

1999 Conference:

• Benchmarking was the subject of the 1999 conference which was held at the University of Luton.
• Papers on Benchmarking were delivered by Gillian Hayes (QAA), John Tribe and Brian Wheeller
• The results of the ATHE consultation exercise were discussed and approved.