John P. Spare

Abstract

Group Travel has evolved over a century and a half since Thomas Cook first organized a temperance tour by train for over 500 participants. Various modes of transportation, from the stage coach to the motorcoach have affected the way worldwide citizens react to group travel preparations. Multiple skills have been developed and adapted to facilitate the various operator and supplier levels within the group travel industry. Since the advent of international jetliners in the early 1960 's, a wide variety of college level courses have been designed to prepare the modern day student for entrance into the tour and travel industry. Pertinent curricula has mush roomed to over 600 college campuses. Several textbooks have been developed by industry oriented participants since President Carter deregulated the air line industry in 1978. But not enough. The tour and travel curricula has evolved from courses in airline automation, commercial recreation, and travel agency management to tour ism planning, development, and marketing. This thesis addresses whether the group travel textbooks heretofore published have created sufficient skills for today's tour and travel student to assimilate and enter the group travel market place. The language of any new discipline requires the communicator to learn new skills by reading, observing, and imitating. This study evaluates the secondary data from group travel textbooks and then draws conclusions from a questionnaire sent to a random sampling of over half of the industry pre paratory, college, and university campuses. The results indicated that gaps do exist in group travel curriculums. In addition, there is abundant need for new interpretation of group travel skills as seen through the eyes of both the group tour operator and supplier. Several recommendations are discussed at length.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Travel agents--Training of--Textbooks; Tourism--Textbooks; Tourism--Study and teaching

Publication Date

1992

Document Type

Thesis

Department, Program, or Center

School of Food, Hotel and Tourism Management (CAST)

Advisor

Marecki, Richard

Comments

Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works. Physical copy available through RIT's The Wallace Library at: G154 .S62 1992

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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