© Copyright 2009 Ineta Luka, Janis Eriks Niedritis, Agita Donina 2009 Higher Tourism Education – Rimini Paper Challenges of Tourism Education: Emotions versus Business * Dr., assoc.prof. INETA LUKA Dr., assoc.prof. JANIS ERIKS NIEDRITIS MBA, AGITA DONINA School of Business Administration Turiba (BAT), Faculty of International Tourism, Latvia Ineta@turiba.lv ; Janis.Niedritis@turiba.lv ; Agita.Donina@turiba.lv Abstract Political, socio-economic and cultural changes that have taken place in the world during the last years have influenced all the spheres, including tourism. This sets high standards for the tourism specialists. Therefore it is important to coordinate the work between tourism educators, tourism employers, the demands of the society and the students’ wishes in order to create the curriculum that would suit best to the actual needs of all the stakeholders. The goal of the present research is to study the tourism employers and tourism students’ needs in order to improve the curriculum and find out opportunities for its development. The study was conducted in 2009 in the fourth largest tertiary education institution of Latvia, which among other programmes provides well-acknowledged higher education in tourism. 192 tourism employers and 262 tourism students were questioned applying a similar questionnaire consisting of 5 parts. The questionnaire revealed the employers and the students’ opinion following the students’ training in the industry. The data were analysed applying quantitative data analysis software SPSS Statistics 17.0. Based on the ideas gained from the analysis of the research context and on the findings of the empirical study suggestions to improve the tourism curriculum were elaborated. Key words: development, tourism education, curriculum, needs analysis, leadership Introduction Political, socio-economic and cultural changes that have taken place in the world during the last years have influenced all the spheres, including education. Most radically they have affected people’s relations, aims of life and striving to improve their lives. According to J. Rifkin (Rifkins, 2004) we are entering a new age – “the age of access”, in which the most useful value is access to knowledge. He claims that in the future more and more people will pay for experience (culture, entertainment, adventure, experience gained while travelling). Consequently there is a request for highly competent staff able to provide clients with this new experience, cater their wishes and solve problems. This sets high standards for the tourism specialists who have to be able to coordinate their work, solve different problems, use management skills (MacFarlane, 1999) and possess effective leadership skills whose core competency is emotional intelligence (Field, 2004). Tourism specialists must be creative and able to think logically and strategically, as well as possess a high level of professional language competence and intercultural communication skills as they have to operate in versatile socio-cultural contexts. * The authors are thankful for data collection and their preparation in the format suitable for data processing to BAT office assistants Tereze Fuglica, Laima Priedite, Kristiana Talente