IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rnd/arjevr/v1y2011i1p26-35.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tourism Education at the Tertiary Level and Competitive Advantage: A Comparison between Thailand and Malaysia

Author

Listed:
  • Thavorn Thitthongkam

Abstract

Language plays an imperative role in business as a means and a source of power. It is particularly important in the tourism industry when international customers may be unable to communicate directly with service providers in the receiving country, and this has a direct effect on the level of satisfaction that they enjoy during their experience. To address this issue, countries attempt to various degrees to manage their labour markets so as to produce a number of graduates from secondary and tertiary level educational institutions commensurate with the demand from the sector. However, this is quite a young industry at the global level, and it is not clear to what extent the number and quality of such graduates with international language ability will be required. This paper studies the comparative extent of such education at the tertiary level of individuals in both Thailand and Malaysia. It aims to compare the number and variety of people being trained in the tourism and hospitality industry and the extent to which languages are being taught. Results show that there is something of a disconnection between the languages provided and the languages that tourists desire in terms of their mother tongue. Those tourists who can speak English or Chinese may receive service support in those languages, while those who cannot may be disappointed.

Suggested Citation

  • Thavorn Thitthongkam, 2011. "Tourism Education at the Tertiary Level and Competitive Advantage: A Comparison between Thailand and Malaysia," Journal of Education and Vocational Research, AMH International, vol. 1(1), pages 26-35.
    • Handle: RePEc:rnd:arjevr:v:1:y:2011:i:1:p:26-35
    DOI: 10.22610/jevr.v1i1.5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ojs.amhinternational.com/index.php/jevr/article/view/5/5
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://ojs.amhinternational.com/index.php/jevr/article/view/5
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22610/jevr.v1i1.5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rnd:arjevr:v:1:y:2011:i:1:p:26-35. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Muhammad Tayyab (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://ojs.amhinternational.com/index.php/jevr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.