Torrens University researchers present at CAUTHE 2023

I’m beyond proud to be working alongside talented, passionate researchers at Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School at Torrens University. At this year’s CAUTHE conference, we celebrated some big wins for our Tourism and Hospitality Research and Practice cluster members at Torrens University.

Recognition for our Tourism and Hospitality researchers

Hosted in Fremantle, WA, the event kicked off with a bang as Mona Yang, Hospitality Learning Facilitator, was awarded the CAUTHE fellows early career research award for her significant contribution to tourism, hospitality, and events research.

Our team presented a total of 5 working papers at the conference on a variety of topics and received overwhelming responses from delegates who personally congratulated us for the quality of the projects, the significance, and the impact we make with it.

Presenting our Tourism and Hospitality research and practice cluster projects

Antoine and I (on behalf of Cindy Lee, Madalyn Scerri and Rajka Presbury) first presented our paper “The teaching of hospitableness: moderators and enablers for face-to-face and online teaching”. The paper was part of a broader project which won the 2021 TGE fellowship and the best poster award at the 2022 CAUTHE conference. The study proposes a pedagogical model for the teaching of hospitable skills and attitudes in different teaching environments and aims to advance hospitality teaching and learning, particularly how we teach soft skills in hospitality courses.

I also presented the first round of findings from my PhD study with the paper titled “Luxury lodge experience quality: theory development from real-life practice”. Aside from advancing service marketing and management literature, the study provides a blueprint for luxury accommodation firms on how to create high-quality guest experiences. It also showcases the importance of industry engagement in research, as it was conducted collaboratively with Justin King (BMIHMS alumnus) and three luxury lodges in Australia. A true win for our industry-university.

Innovative teaching and research methods for Hospitality and Tourism

Antoine, on behalf of George and Francisco, presented a poster entitled: “Reinventing Food and Beverage Management Education: using pop-up restaurants to teach students industry-relevant skills”. The poster showcases one of our truly innovative assessments integrated as part of the Master of International Hotel Management program, the MFB402 pop-up restaurant assessment. It demonstrated the innovation of our assessments and reflected on how to design and implement authentic assessments in Hospitality courses.

Still showcasing innovation in online teaching and learning, Mona presented a paper done in collaboration with Griffith University entitled “Exploring online experiential learning for culinary tourism course: A comparison of student engagements for virtual and in-person field trips”. The study offers insights into the effectiveness of in-person and virtual field trips in increasing students’ engagement in the context of wine tourism. Well done Mona and the Griffith team. This a great example of cross-institutional collaboration!

Collaborating across Hospitality and Tourism educators

Lastly, Kim Nelson and I, in collaboration with Isabella Ye from the University of Greenwich (UK) presented their conceptual paper entitled: “Into the field: The liminal qualities of tourism research spaces”. The paper is part of a broader study that aims to uncover the unspoken tales and experiences of tourism research fieldworkers. The study aims to contribute to qualitative methods and practice and provide implications for tourism researchers, particularly PhD students and their institutions, who decide to undertake tourism fieldwork, bringing to light the challenges, and risks, but also the enormous benefits of conducting in-situ fieldwork in tourism spaces. The audience was overwhelmingly touched and very keen to learn about the future of the project.

We are very grateful we had the opportunity to present, share, connect, and receive great feedback and appreciation for our groundbreaking, innovative, and high-impact research. It was an opportunity to truly showcase the increasing strength and relevance of our THRP cluster research in the broader tourism academic discourse, and the significant collaborations we are building with other institutions and with industry partners.

We were grateful for the high recognition we received not only from the delegates but also from a variety of esteemed international academics who personally came to congratulate us and discuss our research. We’re proud to have made a huge amount of connections, nurtured existing ones, and started discussions on possible future collaborations with other institutions and individual researchers who are just as passionate as we are to do research.