ITM Bachelor 1. Sem
8029: Introduction International Tourism Management
           

 INTRODUCTION: TOURISM STUDIES AND TOURISM

 Tourism studies

Compared to other scientific disciplines, tourism studies are a relatively new field.
The beginnings of a scientific treatment of tourism are connected to monetary and statistical approaches and a Central European view.

The oldest major texts from Germany
Guyer-Feuler: Beiträge zu einer Statistik des Fremdenverkehrs, (1895),
Stradner: Der Fremdenverkehr (1905) and
Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Fremdenverkehr und Volkswirtschaft (1911) concentrated on economic aspects

as did the early Italian text of
Bodio: Sul movimento dei forestieri in Italia e sul denaro che vi spendono (1899)

and the first major French text of
Picard: L’Industrie du Voyageur (1911).

At the end of the 1920s the economist Robert Glücksmann started in Berlin his Archiv für Fremdenverkehr as a periodical publication of his private tourism research institute.

Accordingly in the 1920s at several universities in Austria and Switzerland, ‘the first European chairs and research programmes were an outgrowth of departments of economics and, to a lesser extent, the field of economic geography’ (Hall 2005: 7).

While the war stopped tourism and the development of tourism science in many countries and Glücksmann’s ‘Jewish’ institute had to close in Nazi Germany, in Switzerland the development continued.

In 1941 in Professor Krapf in Berne started the Forschungsinstitut für Fremdenverkehr, while in St Gallen Professor Hunziker became the first director of the newly-founded Seminar für Fremdenverkehr.

Tourism research in the second half of the twentieth century was – and still is today – dominated by an Anglo-Saxon point of view from researchers working out of North America, Great Britain or Australia and New Zealand. The impact from other areas is minimal, especially if the publications are not in English.

For the 21st century, some Asian scholars claim that the "third wave" of tourism science will be, after Europe and North America, now Asia.

Disciplines engaged in tourism sciences are no longer restricted to economics and geography but have multiplied, even though the quality and depth of tourism research is sharply criticized within the guild.

Cooper (2003) finds four problems of tourism sciences still existing today:
- conceptual weakness and fuzziness,

- a spread of topics and a lack of focus,

- a predominance of one-off atheoretical case studies, and

- difficulties with access to quality large-scale data sources.

- Disciplinary approaches to tourism

Economics (Example: Economic contribution, costs and benefits)
 Law (legal framework)
  Marketing (marketing channels, consumer behaviour)
   Management (Operations, service, Human Resource Management)
    Finance&Accounting (Feasibility, real estate)
     Hospitality (accomodation, convention, gastronomy, casinos)
      Architecture&Design (landscape architecture, heritage)
       Transport/Mobility studies (infrastructure)
        Leisure studies (activities, policies, relation to tourism)
         Ecology (impact on nature, national parks)
          Geography (spatial patterns, movement of people)
           Urban&regional planning (tourism development studies)
            Political analysis (decision-making, participation)
             Sociology (tourism&contemporary society, segmentation)
              Cultural studies (transnationalism)
               Anthropology (host and guest, social impact)
                Psychology (travel motivation, tourist behaviour) etc.
 

Most of the about 20 study programs for tourism in Germany are less than 15 years old.

"Tourism Science" as a discipline is not yet well established.

Many still only consider it as a "hyphenated" science Bindestrich-Wissenschaft (tourism-geography, tourism-sociology...)

  Contact: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt FRGS
Bachelor and Master Program International Tourism Management
arlt@fh-westkueste.de, Office 2.018, Tel. 0481 8555-513
Consultation hours (during lecture period): Tuesday 16.00 - 17.00 h