Sustainability in Hospitality Education: The Industry's Perspective and Implications for Curriculum

We examined hospitality industry managers' perspectives on sustainability in education based on in-depth interviews with 11 managers in Northern California. We found general agreement that sustainability should be incorporated into the hospitality curriculum because it has become a new standard in the hospitality industry. The interviewees also agreed that students should learn about sustainability in a comprehensive way rather than focusing only on 1 dimension (i.e., protecting the environment) so that they can operationalize the concept in any given situation. Meanwhile, each manager's definition of sustainability varied, despite some commonalities. Our findings imply that the hospitality curriculum should be updated and more progressive to help students harness conceptual and practical competencies about sustainability.