E-Tourism curriculum design: Filling the gap between knowledge demand and supply

Abstract

e-Tourism or e-tourism business, represents the development of tourism to integrate ICT tools and has significantly changed the infrastructure of the tourism industry and tourists' behavior over the last decade. In order to meet the needs of new tourists, service supplier (i.e. the university) most meet the requirements of e-tourism industries. Research suggests that higher education, as one of the most important knowledge providers, is not currently meeting the needs of the e-tourism industry, especially in GMS developing countries. The quality of e-tourism curriculum provision depends largely on the curriculum quality and its subsequent implementation. This research focuses on two major problems, which represent a gap between the knowledge needs of the e-tourism industry and the knowledge provided by tourism curricula in higher education. The research investigates how to fill the gap between knowledge demand and that supplied by higher education through an analysis of the "as-is" situation and the desired "to-be" situation as related to e-tourism curriculum design. A solution is proposed through an integration of the tools of supply chain management and knowledge management. © 2011 IEEE.