Musings at the end of Semester

December 19, 2007 Marc Simard NSCC Tourism Faculty

I have been teaching at the Nova Scotia Community College since January of 1995. In just one month I will reach my thirteenth anniversary. Even after all these years officially away from industry I still feel very much part of the "real world" and struggle to stay connected and stay up to date with industry and the changes it is experiencing .

The great thing about teaching is that one gets the sense of both dealing with the future but also of having an impact on that future. You see when you work at a hotel you can have some impact on that hotel but as a teacher one can hope to change in some small way all the hotels one's students will work at. In my thirteen years I have taught and become engaged with more than 500 students.

In the last few years we have all dealt with an increasing wave of change. I know that we as an industry have always faced change, new bosses and new technology but now there seems to be both, more change and it seems to be happening more quickly.

I have tried to discern my response to this change, whether the world is faster or if I am just slowing down. I suspect a little bit of both is the case, but as I took the time to read, explore and reflect on change I thought that in my first tourism management blog the discussion of some of these tourism trends would make a good beginning for this blog. So here goes. Consider the trends that we as an industry are facing. ( By no means an inclussive list)

1. The retiring baby boomers are coming. We as an industry face not only the retirement of a generation of managers but these boomers are at their peak earning years and love to travel

2. The electronic age is upon us. I don’t know if any of us know what that really means but it will impact us I suspect in almost every way. People not only book travel on-line but blog about it and research their travel opportunities on-line. Then, is the in-house technology on the way everything from new property management systems, loyalty systems to perhaps the disappearance of the front desk as we know it and even the guest room key. Let’s face it if we can have ticket less airline travel what do we need a key for?

3. Web 2.0. I know this is part of the electronic age but it seems to me to be so much more. Not only are our clients and those who don’t choose us on-line finding out and sharing about us.So are our employees, potential employees and our competitors. Social Media whether a force for good or evil is a reality that may change its name from facebook to something else but is not likely to go away. Right now many of us are at the denial stage, a few are aware and even fewer are playing the Web 2.0 game recognizing its potential. Oh yeah and don’t forget the opportunities for collaborative learning both in the work place and as part consumer behavior and the purchase cycle. By the way e-mail is old fashioned , in fact is considered by our students or young employees asthe communication method of the system ( what we used to call “The Man”)

4. Cultural Diversity. I used to think that this meant that we had to learn to deal with immigrants and their cultural values in the workplace. After all immigrants where the answer to the rising employee shortage. Well I’ve had a couple of epiphanies about that over the last two years. The first is that most immigrants (other then refugees) to Canada have more education than I . Thy are not coming here to have a career as a house person or room attendant. Not that this awareness of diversity isn’t an important part of our industry as our guests are international and oh yes we will have to recruit workers internationally at least on short term visas. The next epiphany is worth it’s on section so please read number 5
5. Millennials. Along the way discover that I was an immigrant as well, a “Digital Immigrant”. This I think is having an increasing impact on industry as we discover that we are suffering not only from a generation gap but perhaps more importantly a paradigm shift into the way they work and look at life. Yes I know that each generation has speaking of the failure of the next generation to come up to expectations since the beginning of societies. I remember first running across this concept as a youth while reading “The Satyricon” which was written by Platonius during the reign of Emperor Nero nearly 2000 years ago . None the less no previous generation has had the internet embedded in their lives. This generation shares with the world (FaceBook, MySpace, MSN etc…) everything (even those things we would never) and expects to find answers at their fingertips. Lets face it will all Google things. ( Imagine how quickly that became a verb). Wikipedia now has more pages and words in than the Encyclopedia Britannica and is considered to have equal weight by the millennials. So how do we communicate to them? By this I mean how do we find them and reach then where they are?

6. Education. At least in Nova Scotia we have spent fifteen years being inclusive in our education system and preparing most everyone for University. While a laudable goal. I think a society that can’t keep it toilets running is likely to be in trouble before long. The ramifications of these decision are manifold and worth a future blog of their own. Certainly the ramifications are important for business and society.

7. Demographics. The bottom line is that there are fewer young people than old people. The implications of this are huge from increased wages, a lack of workers and increased expectations from the under 25 workers. This means that we may have to become better employers, look for non-traditional employees, change the way we work and the way we manage. This is only the beginning and I suspect worthy of many future blogs ahead of us.


Well that is enough for one rant. I hope you will add to the list. It would be wonderful to see a dialogue on these issues from industry and students alum and those simply with a point of view. There is no question that as Tourism professionals these are issues we are going to have to solve, or at least cope with in the years ahead.

It is not the New Year yet but my new year’s resolution for next year is to blog about our industry, about applied education and the challenges facing faculty/industry teaching/training in the Tourism industry.

May you all have a blessed Christmas, happy holidays and the very best in the New Year!