Abstract :
Tourism programs in vocational schools aim to train intermediate and mid-level human resources for the tourism sector. There is increasing emphasis placed upon the requirement that programs providing vocational tourism education provide better tourism education, raising the required human resources in terms of both their quality and quantity. In this study the “focus group” interview method was used in the evaluation of the existing and targeted tourism education. This methodology was preferred because divergent ideas and opinions are discussed by the members of focus group so that these opinions put forward solutions to obtain the targeted quality in tourism education. This study aims to evaluate the views of the officials regarding public administrators in the field of tourism, academics, NGO officials and professional managers on the courses offered in the curriculum, training conditions, targeted skills and abilities that the students are to obtain. According to the data obtained in this survey, in the schools providing vocational tourism education and aiming to educate qualified human resources, it was observed that important problems such as: the academic calendar, training practices and physical deficiencies still remained. However, there was found to be an inadequate level of cooperation and coordination between the supply side (the vocational high schools), the demand side (the tourism sector) and the public institutions as well as in the regulatory and supervisory tasks.
