Balancing tourism education and training

This paper assumes that tourism educated and trained students play different roles (in driving future tourist demands and in meeting current tourist preferences, respectively), and it states that the main features characterising the four stakeholders involved in the design, development and implementation of tourism programmes (firms, students, educational and governmental institutions), together with the main facts they face in taking their decisions, lead to a non-optimal strategic long-run equilibrium, where tourism non-graduated or differently-from-tourism graduated employees prevail. The development of an evolutionary model allows to identify the main features characterising firms and students, to be focused on by educational and governmental institutions, in order to move towards the optimal equilibrium, where tourism graduated employees prevail, while the development of a dynamic model allows to show that this equilibrium is not detrimental to tourism trained employees. This work also suggests a possible educational strategy that could allow to move away from the non-optimal equilibrium, by achieving public objectives (such as environmental or ethical tourism), by relying on feasible educational approaches (about what and how to teach), and by taking into account the private characteristics (of firms and students). Therefore, balancing tourism education and training is both possible and beneficial to all stakeholders involved.