Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Tourism-Oriented Vocational Degree Programmes in Turkey

Tourism is a trillion dollar global industry and accounts for 10.4% of the total GDP (WTTC 2018). The sector supports 313 million jobs, perhaps 1 in 10 jobs worldwide, and creates a tourism community involving local people, the sector, NGOs, policy-makers and, of course, the education sector (Knusden et al. 2007; Haigh 2006). However, tourism, as a term, has gone through many changes in the last three decades, many driven by the paradigms of neo-liberalism and post-modernism (Xu et al. 2014). In the early development stage, the penetration of tourism into society was mainly controlled by ‘authenticity’, which was later turned into a consumption-oriented economy guided by neoliberal concepts such as commercialisation and commodification (West and Carrier 2004). As it evolved into a highly profitable sector in the economy, emerging economies seized upon the development of tourism as a means of revitalizing local economies, redressing regional imbalances, and realising sustainable economic benefits.