How Students Perceive Travel Agency–Related Degree Courses

Abstract

Travel agency-related degree courses have long been offered for those interested in travel and tourism management. However, some students or even instructors have come to perceive these courses as difficult and insignificant. One reason for this is that travel agency operations and management is viewed by many as a sunset business in the contemporary world. Therefore, academic research in this area has been sparse. Given this gap in knowledge, the current research was conducted to review the literature on travel agency operations and management and to survey students in order to capture their understanding and perceptions. The results shed some light for instructors in terms of future delivery of captioned courses. INTRODUCTIONThe history of the modern travel agency dates back to the mid-19th century, when Thomas Cook established a chain of agencies offering package tours. Wholesale and retail travel agencies steadily grew and provided different basic or particular tourism and travel-related services in collaboration with their counterparts in different tourism destinations around the world. Many travel and tourism-related educational programs have been adjusting and upgrading their efforts in order to address the ever-changing needs of the markets, and many have continued to offer courses related to travel agency operations and management within broader programs covering the tourism and travel industries. However, based on our years of experience delivering related courses and communicating with peers and students, we noticed that stakeholders tend to have controversies over the education practice noted previously. Some students or even instructors perceive these courses as difficult and insignificant; one Correspondence should be addressed to Jing (Bill) Xu, reason for this is that travel agency operations and management is viewed by many as a sunset business in the contemporary world. By contrast, many others tend to regard the courses as crucial for subsequent in-depth tourism knowledge delivery in a broader sphere. For that reason, achieving optimal teaching efficacy and positive learning outcomes by satisfying students as well as market demand appears to be of vital importance to course instructors and also program coordinators.Although instructors teaching travel agency-related courses may intuitively be aware of how students are motivated and how they participate to learn, few if any comprehensive studies have explored how and in what manner students perceive and expect delivery of the courses. In addition, few academic attempts have been made to review the research topics relevant to this business sector that can be useful and insightful to educators. The current research thus aims to fill in these gaps. The research questions addressed include the following: 1. What are the themes related to travel agency operations and management that have been investigated in the academic literature (journal articles and textbooks)? Downloaded by [University of Sherbrooke] at 21:56 02 May 2015 TRAVEL AGENCY DEGREE COU...

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