Professional accreditation in the Australian tourism industry; an uncertain future

Until recently, individuals seeking recognition of their professional stand ing within the Australian tourism industry had but one option, membership o f the Australian Institute of Travel and Tourism. More recently, employer b odies in several tourism industry sectors, namely, retail travel, meetings and inbound, have acted to develop individual accreditation schemes designe d to confer a level of professional standing upon individuals working in th eir respective sectors. This paper begins with an overview of the individua l tourism-related accreditation schemes currently operating in Australia an d then moves on to discuss the forces that have led to their development. F ollowing on from this discussion, the operational difficulties that these p rogrammes have encountered are examined along with their respective future outlooks. It is argued that there appears to be a certain consistency in th e problems faced by existing programmes and that these difficulties place a question mark over the longer-term viability of at least some of these sch emes. These difficulties, it is suggested, parallel many of the problems br ing faced by organisation-based accreditation schemes in the tourism indust ry. In the final part of this paper, some suggestions are made as to how th ese problems might be addressed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.