The very sophisticated concept encapsulated in the title: “Well-being and Quality of Life through Hospitality Education” is one that is very relevant to the present day wellness holiday sector in Estonia * which employs thousands catering for the well-being of guests, and which on a wider scale, affects hundreds of thousands of people in the resorts providing the environment, subsidiary services and supporting infrastructure for the aforementioned guests.

Who provides the awareness, knowledge and tools supporting well-being and quality of life for employees and communities in the hospitality sector and how? Is it necessary to be well and satisfied with the quality of one’s own life to be able to promote well-being and quality of life to others?

While the terms well-being and quality of life have become commonplace not only in everyday use but in far more strategic contexts, the obvious challenge remains how we address our own sustainability.

Sustainability has been addressed since the late 1980s with reference to the economy, environment and community. Our quest for Mission Possible will get stuck in an endless loop if we fail to address the sustainability - the capacity to endure – in relation to ourselves as managers, researchers, teachers, students, employers and employees – and as host communities of course …

* Presentations of Estonia as a travel destination include wellness holidays as one the four main topics. Estonia’s beautiful sandy beaches, popular spa hotels and mud therapy centres, and water parks have been attracting and pampering visitors for a good many years. While the country’s spa traditions – drawing on three local key factors – sauna, seawater and mud - date back to the 1820s, today hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to Estonia each year in order to spend their holiday in one of the more than 40 spas.

Our students and the industry professionals of the future represent a paradigm shift from previous generations in terms of their workplace and wider life expectations. They appear to do almost everything differently from preceding student and employee cohorts and nowhere is this contrast more stark than when comparing these young people to established hospitality programmes and their teachers. Generation Y, brought up to take their environment of instant communications and social networking as a “norm”, adopt a perspective on their future lives which is frequently at odds with the traditional career and life models upon which much education is built.

This paper will challenge prevailing and traditional approaches to hospitality management education, suggesting they are outmoded in their conceptualisation, content and delivery. The paper will argue that, despite a pedigree of some 120 years, we have collectively failed to deliver what either our students or the contemporary international industry requires. However, this failure also represents complicity on the part of our industry partners who have been more than willing to accept the mediocre outputs of our endeavours as valuable resources for lower and middle ranked management positions without demanding the qualities of excellence and leadership for which the hospitality industry frequently looks for elsewhere.

In today’s globally competitive market place, not only products but also services are increasingly commoditized. Differentiation in the hospitality, tourism and wellness industries has therefore become a challenge. Customers today demand unique, compelling, efficient and reliable service - essentially, those factors that potentially lead to a memorable customer experience. It is therefore imperative that hospitality, tourism and wellness educators provide to prospective managers service management as one of the core skills. Future managers should learn the steps necessary to position and to operate their firms within a customer-centric internal paradigm. Tomorrow’s market leaders will be those corporations that adopt an internal mindset of “think for the customer” and to add value across the entire range of their activities and offerings. Service management education will compel students to examine and learn how to manage the core advantage of hospitality, tourism and wellness firms – service.

One of the crucial factors in the success of hospitality and tourism businesses in competitive environments is a well-trained and educated workforce. The availability of such a resource becomes even more crucial in countries and destinations exposed to concerns over security and safety. Consequently, in such destinations, the career image of tourism and hospitality jobs might be severely affected. Prevailing uncertainty with regard to safety and security situations is a key factor for perceiving this economic sector as high-risk in terms of occupational stability.

Studies investigating human resource availability in turbulent destinations have already looked at the problem, but there has not been any study investigating this issue from the perspective of tourism and hotel schools and universities, which aim at generating a regular supply of tourism and hospitality workers, while facing disruptions and fluctuating demand for hospitality and tourism training and academic programs.

Seeking management solutions to the above issues in the Israeli market, a study into the supply and demand patterns of tourism and hospitality training programs was conducted. The study also looked at the career images of potential students before, while and after a security incident occurred. Results of this study show that security incidents are highly and directly correlated with the demand for tourism and hospitality training programmes. Furthermore, it showed that the supply in terms of number of programmes offered declined as a result of on-going safety and security incidents.

Fluctuations in tourism and hospitality career image were also found before tourism crises, while a tourism crisis takes place and during the recovery period. These findings led to various management implications capable of mitigating the damage for hotels and destinations, as well as for the training and academic institutions.

Customers are seeking both education and entertainment experiences while enjoying a spa treatment. Education for the development of mind and entertainment for the celebration of the body.
A massage of 15–30 or 45 minutes that brings a temporary solution to the everyday problems is not enough; today's consumers are looking for a guru, a mentor to lead them to a mental detoxification, a new lifestyle and seek a complete new vision of wellness. All this becomes evident when we think about the fact that the pursuit for education has always been well anchored in human beings and that there is the need to reframe their existence, to give a clear vision and specific guidelines to their habits.

To complement education, consumers want something funny, entertaining, relaxing that adds joy, passion and an element of surprise to their everyday lives. Taking into account these two elements, we can say that the wellness industry represents the perfect match of these wants and needs.

Last but not least, spa managers, therapists and beauticians should bear in mind that only a long term relationship with their customers will bring a sustainable solution to the customers’ problems and therefore the concept of “edutaintment” provides the best option. This presentation will define the specific next steps to take, based on the priorities of today’s Spa Consumers.

Against a backdrop of rising world food commodity prices fuelled by growing populations and water scarcity that impact all food sectors, and increasing levels of environmental pollution (of which Hospitality contributes over 5% of global CO2 emissions) there are fortunately some innovative developments that are being witnessed.

Sustainable restaurants offering nutritious, flavoursome dishes that are served in an appetizing manner are hard to come by. Happily, Noma in Copenghagen - an original Nordic gourmet restaurant was voted “the world’s best restaurant” in 2010. In New York, the city authorities have banned the use of artery clogging trans fats, a lesson that European nations seem slow to adopt.

To combat rising energy costs and protect the world’s non-renewable energy sources, hoteliers are seeking innovative solutions. In Bonn, a group of hoteliers has signed up to the Hotel Energy Solutions scheme created by UNWTO. Realising that 40% of hotel energy costs are directly related to hotel building construction techniques the use of sustainable building accreditation systems is rapidly increasing. This subject has stimulated the development of a new form of leisure activity; Energy Tourism such as is found at Boku University in Vienna. Some Hospitality Industry sectors are taking steps to develop the societal pillar of sustainability in their product development. Innocenti, Green and Black’s organic chocolate and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream all incorporate the principles of social value in their product design; some hotels employ handicapped people in their workforce. Myself and fellow authors Claudia Simons-Kaufmann and Willy Legrand, have just completed a compendium of hotel and tourism initiatives around the world that primarily aim to promote regional, sustainable economic development through the employment of underprivileged, indigenous peoples in hospitality and tourism ventures.

Tourism and hospitality education should be based around the three main pillars of sustainability, ethics and cross cultural understanding. Cross-cultural issues will be discussed in the context of programme design, curriculum development, course content, course delivery, student profiles, and employability. Quality of Life and wellness have become themes of global interest for governments and educationalists alike, but there is a growing understanding that national, regional, local and indigenous cultures need to be understood and respected in order to maximise local community quality of life and tourist wellbeing.

Programme design should be based on economic and environmental sustainability, ethical business and fair trade, and anthropological and sociological understandings of culture. The curriculum must be multi-disciplinary to address all of these issues. Course content needs to be multi-level if it is to take into consideration global, national, regional, local and indigenous concerns. Course delivery may be undertaken by local or foreign teachers, but they need to have cross-cultural understanding and sensitivity. The students may be local or foreign but they should be open, tolerant and curious about other cultures. Students can be employed at home or abroad, they might work with their own nationality or foreigners, and they will probably serve both domestic and international tourists – so they should be trained to work with and respect other people and places.

The talk will draw on examples from health and wellness tourism education. Although this is a global industry offering standardised products, the need for cultural differentiation in products and services is growing. This can include understanding and drawing on the cultural traditions of different countries and regions; using indigenous therapies in signature treatments; respecting the cultural needs and sensitivities of different nationalities; and using local materials and ingredients in a sustainable way.

Nigel Hemmington, PhD Professor, Pro Vice-Chancellor International Dean Faculty of Applied Humanities Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand Chartered Marketer nigel.hemmington@aut.ac.nz

CEO of Lausanne Hospitality Consulting SA, Switzerland

Antti Halli

President (emeritus), Counsellor of Education, HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Finland

Ain Hinsberg