28th Annual Council for Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Education (CAUTHE) Conference

The Council for Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Education (CAUTHE) represents the interests of higher education provides of bachelor degree level and above in tourism, hospitality and events education in Australia and New Zealand. For more information visit the CAUTHE website

It is 25 years since a small group of tourism and hospitality educators (THE) gathered at the University of Newcastle for a conference that was the precursor to the annual CAUTHE conferences. It would have been impossible to imagine back in the early 1990s how industrial cities, such as Newcastle, might adapt to a post-industrial world let alone establish services economies to attract tourists. Yet Newcastle, like many regional cities globally, have successfully negotiated this transition by getting smart about processes of renewal and creating quality services for both residents and visitors on the foundation of a knowledge economy.

CAUTHE 2018 will provide a forum to explore how the rapid development of easily accessible information is transforming the ways by which visitors and tourists behave. It will also provide a forum for considering how tourism, hospitality and events might capitalise on opportunities that emerge in a world where smart technologies produce large data sets that can provide detailed insights into tourist mobilities and behaviours.

CAUTHE 2018 will consider changes that are occurring in the way future generations of tourism, hospitality and event professionals are developing their knowledge and expertise. CAUTHE 2018 will provide opportunities to share knowledge about how contemporary tourism, hospitality and event students learn, the various technologies that assist or hinder the learning process, and the role of educators in a context where information is only one click away.

At CAUTHE 2018 we acknowledge that the process of building knowledge and becoming smart about tourism, hospitality and events can generate a series of paradoxes, ironies, and juxtapositions. Not only does new knowledge challenge conventions in tourism contexts but alternative ways of knowing can disrupt how tourism, hospitality and events are developed and experienced.

Potential topics that capture these juxtaposing dualities include:

• Rurality and urbanism in regional tourism destination development
• The co-existence of extractive industries and sustainable tourism in destinations
• Regulating the tourism sharing economy while deregulating small and medium tourism enterprises to encourage enterprise
• Outbound and inbound global mobility of youth – are they equal?
• Culturally sustainable Indigenous tourism in a world that uses a primarily global north perspective
• Volunteer tourism and the rise of a narcissistic generation
• Promoting sustainable tourism services to international tourists who need to travel long distances on high carbon emitting forms of transport
• A predominantly male senior academy with a largely female junior academy
• Slow tourism in an increasingly time pressured global workforce
• The possibility that smart technologies lead to a lack of deep thinking in tourists about sustainability?
• Dispassionate tourism scholarship with compassionate outcomes
• Continuity with change in tourism, hospitality and events

These topics will be explored through keynote presentations, expert panel sessions, concurrent paper presentations, poster presentations, and a series of workshops.