Andreas Toumazatos, a senior lecturer with vision for tourism education reminds us that ,if you love what you do, great things can happen.
H.A: What does teaching mean to you?
T.A : The power to share contemporary knowledge and unique experience with people, who have common interests and field of action.
Η.Α: At the end of the day what is the thing that fills you up with satisfaction?
Τ.Α: Always the students’ evolution in a professional level but also their progress through life, their route and the values that they apply, which we all try to instill in education. Keeping these alive and passing them on for a humane, fair, productive society ,especially in the times we live in.
H.A: What do you think lacks concerning the country’s tourism education nowadays?
T.A: The business approach of all stakeholders involved starting from tourism businesses owners and educational institutions to public entities especially on the hierarchy’s highest ranking. They must all love tourism sector and adopt an approach based on human factor and not only on opportune, swift and immediate return on investment. They need to preserve a steady plan and realistic goal time zones achievement with respect to the young ones, the professionals, direct and constant variable market’s needs.
H.A: During your academic course was there any time you felt underprivileged?
T.A: Many times, especially here in Greece and in cases that I found myself being judged by people who had nothing to do with the business and the objective. Due to their positions, which they held either by family right or because of political and social connections did not allow me to have a common, steady, realistic vision and strategy field as well as creative action with them.
H.A: How easy or difficult is for an educational institution to guarantee employment to a large number of its students?
T.A: Guaranteeing an employment in an after-coronavirus era is a word unpragmatist and unapplied. However, tourism even today is a unique professional way-out. A growth lever as well as evolution for young children in many places but also for the country’s economy. The academic schools’ programms, their partnerships with foreign Universities, the infrastructure, the training personnel not to mention knowhow have been renewed significantly these past years in all levels.
With the law’s amendment and the inability for private schools to register internships in ERGANI system, makes it even harder. Children lack of employment opportunity, work experience and direct appliance of theoretical knowledge already acquired. We hope that in the upcoming future both State and private sectors will succeed in finding direct solution to this additional Greek society’s problem and legal failure, which caused it.
H.A: What are the characteristics of an exceptional teacher in the eyes of students and fellow teachers?
T.A : A teacher with overall and precise knowledge of today’s modern professional, academic and educational requirements. With several educational teaching methods, knowhow of modern bibliography and today’s era case studies, the use and development of technological means will motivate young children to learn.
Youngsters will evolve themselves through familiar and educational procedures with the purpose to love education and become accustomed to the real needs and trends of the profession they will follow.
Andreas Toumazatos
H.A: Do you consider a school’s syllabus, specialized in tourism, to be one of the most important supplies for a student in order to set his course?
T.A: Naturally and this is why planning, testing and credibility οf academic and educational programs should be taken highly into consideration. They also need to be firmly controlled. Such examples are the programs implemented by United Kingdom’s institutions, those in Switzerland, European Union and United States of America carried out by independent entities. Giving great importance to their academic quality and validity is essential.They are formed according to the needs of higher and highest education and worldwide’s tourism industry.
H.A: Describe us a positive moment that marked you both as a professor and a man.
T.A: All my collaborations with prestigious educational institutions both in private and in public sectors in countries such as Switzerland, France, United Kingdom and Greece have marked me positively as a man first and as a teacher. Everyday’s co-operation and interaction with young children is the element of vocation’s uniqueness.
The most positive reactions of joy, respect and students comments, coworkers and employers when they meet you after a long time, these are the ones that mark you ,as you said. They provide you with the feeling of completion as a professional.
Andreas Toumazatos, Senior Lecturer
H.A: What do you consider to be the tourism’s future after this unprecedented health crisis?
T.A: It will be unarguably a difficult year for all. Finding a vaccine will promptly mitigate the crisis and this is what we worldwide hope for . However, the post traumatic shock and the guest’s/traveller’s fear to commute massively by following existing protocols will delay the growth rates significantly.
The numbers of 2019 if easily reached until 2022 will be a major success but this will depend on many, variable and not directly manageable factors by us.
H.A: What is the specific one thing that times from times your students have told you and what do you advise them?
T.A : Usually it has to do with matters of tourism investments, professional developments, workplace matters and career growth both in Greek and in a professional level. They need to evolve rapidly, to expand their horizons in an international level and seek this evolvement away from home or even their own country.
A man of vision and experience in tourism studies
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