The tourism industry is the world's largest industry and employer. World tourist arrivals have topped 900 million and are growing at 4% (United Nations World Tourism Organization). The industry has enormous scope for further development and one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals is to assist in relieving poverty through tourism in developing countries.
Griffith University is the research leader in this field within Australia and has been ranked by Tourism Management (2005 and 2006) in the top six universities worldwide for tourism research.
The Davos Declaration (PDF 71k) has put tourism's response to climate change at the forefront of industry sustainability. Sustainable tourism includes a number of research areas and at Griffith we have major strengths in environmental and eco tourism, accommodation provision, hospitality, destination development, employee relations, events, leisure, and marketing.
The tourism management research program focuses on:
- customer service
- destination branding and marketing
- hospitality management and operations
- quality tourism experiences
- strata titled management
- sustainable tourism
- timeshare management
- human resources for the service industry
Research has been conducted with a variety of service industry stakeholder groups such as:
- Australian Timeshare and Holiday Ownership Council
- Gold Coast City Council
- Gold Coast Tourism
- National Community Titles Institute
- Queensland Department of State Development
- Queensland Development Research Institute
- Tourism Queensland
- Tourism Transport Forum