TEFI’s mission is “to be the leading, forward-looking network that inspires, informs and supports tourism educators and students to passionately and courageously transform the world for the better.” In support of this mission, TEFI’s core values provide a framework for building a future agenda for tourism education. This values-based approach to tourism education strives to broaden and deepen tourism education—to evolve beyond the narrow, instrumental, short-term focus of days past, to incorporate humanist values and impart the skills and knowledge necessary for making mindful decisions. TEFI engages students, industry, and communities in life-shaping learning experiences and reflection that contributes to the moral development of tourism practitioners.

1. -1-
Origin
In recent years, it has become increasingly obvious that
tourism education needs serious rethinking. Surging growth
in tourism arrivals and receipts, going strong since the
middle of the twentieth century, spurred a proliferation of
tourism programs in higher education to meet the demands
of the burgeoning industry. As more complex
understandings about tourism began to emerge, however,
it became clear that equating the industrialization and
growth of tourism with social and economic progress was
far too simplistic—indeed, increases in visitation and
receipts do not always reap positive benefits.
Simultaneously, rapid socio-cultural and economic changes
are afoot, which are rendering the future increasingly
uncertain. The jobs of today are markedly different from
those of yesterday, and it seems certain that those of
tomorrow will be different still. Students entering the
tourism sector, with its high levels of volatility and rapid
globalization, are going to need different skills and
understandings in order to achieve meaningful and
successful professional lives. It was in recognition of this
landscape of change, and the demand it drives to rethink
tourism education, that the Tourism Education Futures
Initiative (TEFI) was born.
TEFI began as a conversation between Professors Pauline
Sheldon and Dan Fesenmaier in 2006. Identifying the need
for a more strategic and future-oriented approach to
tourism education, they gathered a group of 45 educators
and industry representatives at Modul University Vienna to
map out their agenda (Sheldon, Fesenmaier, & Tribe,
2014). Drawn together by a fundamental belief in the power
of tourism as a change agent, the group identified a need
to ethically and strategically consider tourism education’s
future and its broader role in society (Sheldon et al., 2008).
Tourism is a worldmaking activity. It can change
perspectives, give hope, and promote understanding, but it
can also bring harm: it literally reshapes the world in both
discursive and material terms. During the twentieth century,
tourism education was largely focused on developing
business acumen and service skills, with little consideration
being given to the ethical and moral foundations students
would need to navigate the professional world and become
socially and environmentally responsible leaders there.
The first TEFI meeting examined five possible future socio-
economic scenarios for the world and how tourism and
tourism education might adapt. From this meeting, it
became clear that “tourism educational programs need to
fundamentally retool and redesign—not incrementally by
adding new courses or simply by putting courses on-line—
but by changing the nature of what is taught and how it is
taught” (Sheldon, Fesenmaier, Wober, Cooper, & Antonioli,
2008, p. 63). By all accounts, the first TEFI meeting was an
inspirational event, and its uplifting dialogic approach is an
important legacy that subsequent TEFI meetings have
continued to uphold.
Over time, the group continued to consolidate its work,
ultimately producing a White Paper in 2009, which set forth
TEFI’s mission and articulated a set of values to guide
tourism education to 2030 (Sheldon, Fesenmaier, & Tribe,
2009; 2014). These values were conceptualized as
permeable, overlapping dimensions that would grow in
meaning through their application in different contexts.
They could be infused into program and curricula design
and could provide an ethical core for professional
development.
Mission
TEFI’s mission is “to be the leading, forward-looking
network that inspires, informs and supports tourism
educators and students to passionately and courageously
transform the world for the better.” In support of this
mission, TEFI’s core values provide a framework for
building a future agenda for tourism education. This values-
based approach to tourism education strives to broaden
and deepen tourism education—to evolve beyond the
narrow, instrumental, short-term focus of days past, to
incorporate humanist values and impart the skills and
knowledge necessary for making mindful decisions. TEFI
engages students, industry, and communities in life-
shaping learning experiences and reflection that
contributes to the moral development of tourism
practitioners.
TEFI’s values are based on five overlapping dimensions:
• Stewardship: Exercising an ethic of care by
upholding principles associated with sustainability,
responsibility, and service to the community
• Knowledge: Developing critical thinking,
innovation, creativity, and networking, and
The Tourism Education
Futures Initiative
(TEFI)

2. -2-
appreciating different sources and types of
knowledge about tourism
• Professionalism: Aspiring to the highest standards
of professional practice underpinned by
leadership, practicality, services, relevance,
timeliness, reflexivity, teamwork, and partnerships
• Ethics: Engaging in good action and decision-
making, underpinned by honesty, fairness,
transparency, and authentic dialogue
• Mutual respect: Embracing a humanistic approach
to tourism, including a respect for diversity,
inclusion, equity, humility, and collaboration
Over the years, TEFI has expanded its scope to conceive
of education in a more holistic way. No longer focused only
on students in higher education, TEFI realizes that these
students are the industry, government, and third sector of
tomorrow: the future of tourism rests with them. Annual
TEFI conferences, and the individual and collective efforts
of TEFI members, have extended discussions to develop
an agenda that cuts across the teaching, research, and
service functions of tourism educators. Consequently, the
expanded agenda of TEFI is summarized in Figure 1.
Figure 1. TEFI Agenda
Organisation and Administration
The first TEFI meetings were by invitation,
necessitated by the need to define and articulate the
TEFI agenda in a targeted way. By 2011, interest in
TEFI’s work was sufficiently developed that annual
meetings were opened to broader participation. A
legacy of this evolution is that TEFI is not a
membership-based organisation, but rather a liquid
organisation that seeks to be inclusive, regardless of
age, gender, rank, experience, or origin. The common
thread that binds TEFI members is that the network
provides an inclusive space for dialog and reflection
about what it means to educate for a better world and
what it means to be an academic. Members also find
solidarity in the need to activate change inside and
outside their institutions, communities, and industry.
TEFI is thus an organisation temporally and spatially
defined by attendance at its annual meetings and by its
network activities,
collegiality, and
common interests.
A distinguishing
feature of this
approach is that the
average age of both
the TEFI Executive
and network
participants is
younger than many
other tourism networks. It also has a strong commitment to
gender balance and welcomes a growing number of early
career tourism educators who are seeking an inclusive and
supportive environment.
In terms of administration, TEFI has an informal, networked
structure and relies on horizontal cooperation and task-
sharing as opposed to vertical hierarchical structures,
routines, and the rules of a “mechanistic” organisation
(Dredge & Schott, 2014). The lack of a formal structure has
allowed a flow of creative, constructive, and passionate
engagement over issues that matter—issues that can arise
and morph quickly, as the tourism higher education
landscape is very different today, compared even to 8
years ago when TEFI was born. As many programmes in
Western countries reconfigure in response to market
fluctuations, strong growth and structural change is taking
place in countries like Brazil, India, and China, and the
TEFI network is mindful of embracing and sharing
international experiences and insights.
In 2013, TEFI entered a new phase, with the appointment
of a new leadership team to take forward and build upon
the network’s accomplishments to date
(www.tourismeducationfutures.org). Regional TEFI
meetings have been held in Brazil and India, with two-year
provisional support to establish a regional chapter in India
given in 2013.
Success Factors
In 2013, at TEFI7 at Oxford Brookes University, the
conference theme Tourism Education and Global
Citizenship culminated in a discussion of the historical
contributions and the future positioning of the organisation,
from which five priority themes were formulated:
TEFI seeks to be inclusive.
The common thread that
binds TEFI members is that
the network provides an
inclusive space for dialog
and reflection about what
it means to educate for a
better tourism world.

3. -3-
Tourism Teaching and Learning
TEFI will facilitate and disseminate innovative learning
tools, approaches, frameworks, and methods. Initiatives
include the development of a values-based student oath at
Modul University; the development of a global TEFI course
using the open access learning platform Innotour (Liburd,
Hjalger, & Christensen, 2014), and various papers
examining the development and implementation of TEFI
values (Gretzel, Isacsson, Matarrita, & Wainio, 2011;
Gretzel, Jamal, Stronza, & Nepal, 2009; Moscardo &
Murphy, 2011).
Tourism Education Advocacy
TEFI will help to create awareness of tourism as a field of
study, to communicate and share information about the
activities of TEFI members, and to produce case studies
exploring tourism’s role in building tolerance, awareness,
and hope. Initiatives include current work promoting
tourism in higher education and the development of a
prototype communication platform for tourism called “This
Is Tourism.” This advocacy initiative explores how tourism
scholarly communities can share information and
knowledge about what we are, what we do, what our aims
are, and what value we provide to society. The goal is to
design an interactive and dynamic online platform that can
help to inform and promote the study of tourism, and to act
as a repository of information for community building. This
platform prototype is under development in collaboration
with the Tourism Intelligence Forum.
Tourism Education Scholarship
TEFI will advance the scholarship of teaching and learning
in tourism, both inside and outside the academy. Projects
include the creation of an open source tourism journal in
collaboration with the International Academy for the Study
of Tourism, special issues of journals dealing with aspects
of tourism education, a Routledge compilation, and the
future production of a series of TEFI position papers.
Members of TEFI have been actively involved in a range of
national grants, and TEFI provides not only a forum to
share this information but also a support role for those
seeking to prepare grant applications and other initiatives.
Tourism Education Futures
TEFI members will help to take stewardship over the
development of the field. Efforts encompass initiatives to
explore tourism education futures, types of leadership
(Dredge & Schott, 2013), and issues of gender,
race/ethnicity, and language equity in the tourism
academy. Activities such as the development of future
conferences and TEFI’s organisational planning are also
included here.
Tourism and Social Entrepreneurship
TEFI will pursue creative avenues for translating values
and ideas into action. TEFI’s key activity in this regard to
date, led by Roberto Daniele, was the unique TEFI Walking
Workshop, held in Nepal in May 2014. The 10-day event
took delegates off the beaten track to the rural villages of
Bupsa and Bumburi in the Lower Solu Khumbu region of
the Himalayas. Whilst trekking on the footpaths of Nepal,
participants delivered ‘Walking Papers’ on their chosen
subject and discussed best practice in tourism and social
enterprise with local village committees. They also visited
relevant, meaningful, and hands-on social
entrepreneurship projects developed and supported by
Moving Mountains Nepal. This project, an innovative
prototype for dynamic learning, has yielded several strong
leads for future action, which will be advanced at TEFI8.
Meetings
There have been eight TEFI meetings:
• 2007 - Vienna, Modul University, Austria. Tourism
Education Futures
• 2008 - Honolulu, University of Hawaii, USA.
Promoting an Academy of Hope
• 2009 - Lugano, Università della Svizzera Italiana,
Switzerland. Framework Development for a Values-
Based Tourism Curriculum.
• 2010 - San Sebastian, University of Deusto, Spain.
Tools for Change and New Challenges
• 2011 - Philadelphia, Temple University, USA.
Activating Change in Tourism Education
• 2012 - Milan, Bocconi University, Italy.
Transformational Leadership for Tourism Education
• 2013 – Oxford, Oxford Brookes University, UK.
Tourism Education for Global Citizenship: Educating
for Lives of Consequence
• 2014 – Guelph, University of Guelph, Canada.
Transformational Learning: Activism, Empowerment
and Political Agency in Tourism Education
Further information about past and future meetings can be
found on the TEFI website
(http://www.tourismeducationfutures.org).
Publications
A number of publications have arisen from TEFI meetings
and network activities, including four special issues in the
Journal of Teaching in Travel and Tourism. The papers in
these issues have been complemented by other
publications about the need for change, TEFI’s mission and
goals, and a variety of initiatives to realize TEFI’s ideals.
Most of these papers were recently compiled by Routledge,
in a volume entitled The Tourism Education Futures:
Activating Change in Tourism Education (Prebežac, Schott,
& Sheldon, 2014).

4. -4-
Future
TEFI’s momentum is
fed by rapid,
sustained change in
academia and
industry, and thus by
the need for
progressive
educators to engage
in forward-thinking dialogue about tourism education and
its societal implications. Given that reform is now a
constant feature of higher education, that the tourism
industry itself continues to change in ways which are
difficult to predict, and that moral engagement to turn
tourism in the service of overcoming global challenges is
more important than ever, TEFI’s work will continue. The
network provides a forum to contemplate what we do as
tourism educators and what qualities we want to nurture in
our students, and it allows us to reflect upon and explore
our political agency.
What form might this organic organisation take in the
future? While the current structure is flexible, it also has its
limitations. As momentum continues, we anticipate there
will one day be a need to devise a more formal structure in
order to support the professional development and self-
actualisation of tourism educators, in sharing and learning
from others’ stories of practice, and ultimately to enhance
TEFI’s collective political agency. This, however, requires
that we build network capacity, recognise difference and
the diversity of challenges across the globe, and promote
and actualize paths of hope and service, to remake the
world for the better.
Executive and Advisory Board
As a networked organization, TEFI is defined by its
members and their engagement across a spectrum of
activities.
Current Executive Group
Dianne Dredge – Chair, Aalborg University, Denmark
(dredge@cgs.aa.dk)
Christian Schott – Vice Chair, Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand (Christian.Schott@vuw.ac.nz)
Robert Daniele – Oxford Brookes University, UK
(rdaniele@brookes.ac.uk)
Kellee Caton – Thompson Rivers University, Canada
(kcaton@tru.ca)
Johan Edelheim – Multidimensional Tourism
Institute/University of Lapland, Finland
(jedelhei@ulapland.fi)
Ana María Munar – Copenhagen Business School,
Denmark (amm.int@CBS.DK)
Advisory Board
Pauline Sheldon, Professor Emerita, University of Hawaii,
USA
Dan Fesenmaier, Professor, University of Florida, USA
Gayle Jennings, Director of Research, Imagine Consulting
Group International, Australia
Nigel Morgan, Professor, University of Surrey, UK
Anna Pollock, Founder, Conscious Travel, UK
Karl Wöber, President, Modul University Vienna, Austria
References
Dredge, D., & Schott, C. (2013). Academic agency and
leadership in tourism higher education. Journal of Teaching
in Travel and Tourism, 13(1), 105–129.
Dredge, D., & Schott, C. (2014). The Tourism Education
Futures Initiative: The way forward. Chapter 21. In D.
Prebežac, C. Schott, & P. Sheldon (Eds.), The Tourism
Education Futures Initiative: Activating Change in Tourism
Education (pp. 371-379). Abingdon: Routledge.
Gretzel, U., Isacsson, A., Matarrita, D., & Wainio, E. (2011).
Teaching based on TEFI values: A case study. Journal of
Teaching in Travel and Tourism, 11(1), 94–106.
Gretzel, U., Jamal, T., Stronza, A., & Nepal, S. K. (2009).
Teaching international tourism: An interdisciplinary, field-
based course. Journal of Teaching in Travel and Tourism,
8(2–3), 261–282.
Liburd, J., Hjalager, A-M., & Christensen, I-M. (2014).
Valuing Tourism Education 2.0. In D. Prebežac, C. Schott,
& P. Sheldon (Eds.), The Tourism Education Futures
Initiative: Activating Change in Tourism Education (pp. 129-
152). Abingdon: Routledge.
Moscardo, G., & Murphy, L. (2011). Toward values
education in tourism: The Challenge of measuring the
values. Journal of Teaching in Travel and Tourism, 11(1),
76–93.
Prebežac, D., Schott, C., & Sheldon, P. (Eds.). (2014). The
Tourism Education Futures Initiative: Activating change in
tourism education. Abingdon: Routledge.
Sheldon, P., Fesenmaier, D. R., & Tribe, J. (2009). White
Paper - The Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI):
Activating change in tourism education. Available:
www.tourismeducationfutures.org [Retrieved 25 May 2014]
Sheldon, P., Fesenmaier, D., & Tribe, J. (2014). The
Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI): Activating
change in tourism education. In D. Prebežac, C. Schott, &
P. Sheldon (Eds.), The Tourism Education Futures
Initiative: Activating Change in Tourism Education (pp. 14–
35). Abingdon: Routledge.
Sheldon, P., Fesenmaier, D., Wober, K., Cooper, C., &
Antonioli, M. (2008). Tourism education futures - 2010–
2030: Building the capacity to lead. Journal of Teaching in
Travel and Tourism, 7(3), 61–68.
TEFI Executive Team:
Dianne Dredge, Christian Schott, Kellee Caton,
Roberto Daniele, Johan Edelheim, and Ana María Munar
TEFI provides a forum to
contemplate what we do
as tourism educators and
what qualities we want to
nurture in our students.