The importance of social sciences in the
curricula of tourism students
Maximiliano E. Korstanje
University of Palermo, Argentina
Abstract: As the one of largest industries of the world, Tourism not only has been
developed in many countries as a mainstream activity but also has transformed
in an academic discipline at universities. With the passing of years, more and
more tertiary institutions and universities adopted tourism as a fertile alternative
for training human resources and professionals for tourism work-force. Based
on the assumption that managerial literature and business has historically exerted
a considerable influence in the creation of programmes, the present paper explores
to what an extent the Social Sciences has been excluded from the formation of
syllabuses and programmes. For so doing, we present important evident that
shows how in Argentina Social Sciences are trivialized to secondary position in
educating the future human resources. Even though it is important next
practitioners hold knowledge related to management and business for the advance
of the industry, no less relevant seems to be the inclusion of scientific-research the
student's curricula. Otherwise, like this was in the case of Argentina, the advance
of this new discipline runs a serious risk to become stagnant.
Keywords: Social Sciences, Management, Curricula, Education, Tourism
and Hospitality
Introduction
S
ince the crippling financial crisis of 2001 where Argentina has been
rushed to abandon its convertibility system, tourism and other related
industries have experienced an unfettered growth. The numbers of hotels
ranged from 6.970 in 1999 to 9.229 in 2005 showing an accumulated rate of
growing of 2.88% annually
1
. In 2004/2005 Buenos Aires city showed an
occupation rate of 47.75% seconded by other traditional tourist destination
as San Carlos de Bariloche (39.35%) and Iguazu (45.74%)
2
. In addition,
Buenos Aires situated as the main tourist destination with more than 3.806
travel-agencies headquarters representing almost the 83% of the entire
volume of tourism-related companies in Argentina. Under such a context, it
is important to question how has been evolved the education and its
potentialities that scientific-research can do in the advance of the discipline.
This begs interesting questions that serve as points of entry in this intriguing
debate, what do the tourism-related students learn?, what importance has
Journal of Tourism, Volume XII, No. 1, 2011
© 2010 by CMTHS-HNB Garhwal University (A Central University), India.
Research Note
1
Source. Market and Statistics Department. Secretary of Tourism. 2006.
2
Source: Anuario Turistico, Secretary of Tourism Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 2006.