Tourism and Governance

Abstract

This chapter discusses tourism education for sustainability with a particular focus on the challenges and opportunities associated with preparing students to work within complex tourism governance settings. It takes the position that the development of tourism within a sustainability framework requires that tourism professionals effectively engage in dynamic social discourses where difficult trade-offs are made between competing demands. The challenge for tourism education is therefore to prepare graduates to work in these complex, value-laden, socio-political environments where they can proactively and positively contribute to developing forms of tourism that progress the objectives of sustainable development. This chapter explores this challenge in terms of a philosophic tourism practitioner education, and in doing so, discusses three key dimensions of this education: historical antecedents and contemporary knowledge and understandings of governance; competencies for tourism governance for sustainability; and ethical action-oriented practice.