THE STATE WE’RE IN: SHARING TOURISM KNOWLEDGE ONLINE

The success of the tourism industry is highly dependent on the quality of business operations. To run tourism businesses well, operators need to be skilled, flexible and innovative in order to maintain and enhance competitiveness. The aim of this paper is to share the authors ’ initial insights into tourism industry capacity building via flexibly delivered online skilling and knowledge sharing. This discussion paper builds on the work of online learning research for small tourism firms conducted in Europe and compares the European approach and considers how the European approach to content development and delivery informed a recently piloted Australian online skilling program. The paper also provides insights into online user behaviour and challenges fundamental research expectations. While both programs have focussed tourism information and skills development, the Australian pilot has been embedded in the Tourism Accreditation Board of Victoria and is being utilised to enable operators to complete tourism industry accreditation. Aiming to raise industry standards and move away from ineffective silo approaches to industry training and capacity building, this pilot reflects the importance of and contributes to the development of an effective national voluntary accreditation system