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The article starts from the paradigm of training as a perspective in development, in evolution, in constant transformation from its various potentialities; Postgraduate education in Latin America is going through a boom time due to the creation of regional spaces for international competitiveness and is inserted into the challenge of responding objectively to the expansion of knowledge in tourism. In this sense, there is a lack of an assessment in the discipline and its training, in contrast to the growth of the sector and the dynamics of globalized education. This research favors the qualitative approach, a comparative method that correlates and integrates a set of categories that are expressed in a particular way on the continent, in each region or country; as well as in each of the institutions studied corresponding to Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Costa Rica. The aforementioned categories of analysis are associated with the emergence of the programs, themes, historical perspective, contextualization of the programs, competencies, which allow determining their particularities and their conformation in regional spaces. The educational offer shows similarities in the construction of programs in accordance with development policies, focused on areas of tourist influence, and demanded by the needs of the sector. The topics addressed, the skills developed and the graduation profiles are differential and attend to the particular characteristics of the institution, inferring a relationship with the research scopes and the trajectory of the professors. It was possible to show that the studied programs respond to the needs of the country where they are developed, and to the evolution and paradigms of national tourism, however, they are projected towards an education with international competitiveness that seeks to respond to the development of global competencies from a vision particular and subjective oriented more towards the sector and devoid of a prospective reflection of the tourist activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]