Satisfaction profiles and tourism curricula – tourism organisations under study

Among other industries, tourism has been confronted with recent changes due to globalization, modern information and communication technologies, changing consumption patterns of customers, tertiarization of the economy, the development of holistic tourism products etc. This results in new requirements demanded by people employed in the tourism industry and asks future decision-makers to adapt the content of the education programmes (Hofstetter, 2004). Training and education courses must reflect the industry’s needs. Several studies have been conducted in terms of job requirements in tourism-related jobs, and a number of qualifications have been elaborated (cp. Weiermair, 1999): communication abilities, empathy, motivation, decision-making abilities, planning abilities, improvisation abilities, etc. Today, the themes most often dealt with in tourism education courses for employees in tourism organizations are: personal skills (communication), marketing skills, organizational aspects of a tourism organization, etc. The paper reports a study conducted in August 2005. Employees of tourism organizations were asked to fill in a standardized questionnaire on the training offer provided for employees of tourism organizations with regard to the importance and the satisfaction with the single offers in order to derive consequences and trends for future tourism curricula of tourism organizations. The conducted survey revealed that the majority of the employees working at South Tyrolean tourism organizations are quite satisfied with the training program offered by the provincial assembly. Course manuals, the topicality of the courses, the personal increase in knowledge, the content of the courses in general and the quality and professionalism of lectors are the key issues on which the course organizers has to focus, as these attributes revealed to be excitement factors in the calculated importance grid. These latent attributes are often needs of which persons are currently unaware, but may result in high levels of customer satisfaction. Despite the outcomes of the survey on the satisfaction with current offers in the training program for employees in tourism organizations, tourism education and training will change considerably in the future due to external changes influencing the structure and planning of tourism curricula. Emerging technologies for instance will change the educational planning in the field of tourism with programs and services via the internet etc. Information technology has a pivotal role to play in enabling companies offered maximize profitability through more precise targeting of market segments and the micro segments within them.