The Future of Education

It is widely acknowledged that creativity does not only manifest itself as artistic inclination, but is equally essential and reflected in any other fields and activities of life. Over the last decade it has basically become a trend leading to the boom of creative economy and industries, including creative tourism that emerged from the increasing demand for spending time creatively during the holiday, i.e., by taking part in creative activities. Creativity is our innate ability, however, if neglected, over the time and under the pressure of certain circumstances, it may decline; therefore, its regular nurturing is as important as the development of any other skill. Due to rapid technological and social advancement and changes, leading companies worldwide have already been screening their future employees’ creative competencies within the recruitment process. Undoubtedly, tourism, as a constantly and rapidly evolving industry, cannot exist without creative professionals either. A creative workforce in any of its sectors is also highly justified in terms of sustainability and competitiveness. Hence, it seems that for Slovakia with its huge potential for the development of creative tourism, creative human resources is even one of the key factors of reducing regional disparities. But are tourism undergraduates as future creative tourism experts creative enough to address this challenge? The present paper shares results of a brief opinion survey conducted among the teachers of the Department of Tourism at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, in Slovakia. The investigation, in addition to the respondents’ general perception of creativity, aimed at mapping their views based on their teaching experience on tourism undergraduates’ level of creativity, as well as on the characteristics of creative students and the areas that require creative approaches in tourism. The findings of the survey, which revealed that teachers consider their students to be rather average in terms of creativity, are to be compared with the results of a further examination focused on measuring tourism students’ level of creativity. In addition, these results serve as a basis for the research on testing and developing educational methods for supporting and enhancing creativity as a fundamental skill of future tourism professionals.

Keywords: tourism, higher education, creativity, creative tourism, opinion survey