The purpose of this exploratory study was to compare differences in the perceptions of international (non United States) and United States tourism professionals regarding content for a global tourism curriculum in higher education. A mailed questionnaire (N=625) was used to gather perceptions from diverse tourism professionals composed of international (n=44) and United States (n=49) subjects. Course topics were rated by tourism professionals regarding their importance to a baccalaureate and graduate tourism curriculum. The secondary purpose was to investigate differences in recommended course topics for a baccalaureate and graduate program based on the 21 international course topics (e.g., advertising, analysis of teaching, business lobbying) summarized by Weenan and Shafer (1983). No course topic was perceived as lower than “medium importance” for either baccalaureate or graduate use. Sixteen and eighteen course topics were of “high importance” for undergraduate and graduate level courses, respectively. Repeated measures ANOVA with post hoc Tukey's HSD found differences in responses based on geographic location and educational level relative to five course topics. Results of the study provide input into a tourism body of knowledge from a global perspective.
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Lengfelder et al. (1994) studied this question.