Following the COVID-19 years, the global tourism industry has experienced remarkable growth, with the UNWTO (2024) reporting a return to 97% of pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2024 – reflecting year-on-year growth of 20%. The myriad of opportunities that this rapid growth has offered hospitality graduates, has also created challenges for both education providers and students, who must continually enhance their skills to stay competitive and market-ready. Professionalism, one of the most essential competencies for a high-quality hospitality workforce, has only been thoroughly explored within the past decade (Cheng & Wong, 2015; Lee, 2014). Professionalism has traditionally been associated with fields including law, architecture, medicine, science, or engineering. However, Cheng and Wong (2015) were among the first to interpret professionalism within the context of the hospitality industry through an exploratory study that included focus-group interviews with junior staff, middle managers, and senior managers across local and international hotel brands. Drawing on the perspective of hospitality practitioners, professionalism was conceptualized across nine attitudinal dimensions: passion, openness to change, a team-oriented attitude, competence and skills, interpersonal skills, emotional self-control, professional ethics, leadership by example, and perfectionism (Cheng and Wong, 2015). Hospitality educators need to be congnisant of these elements of professionalism to ensure that their students graduate with the skills and competencies that the industry requires (Fraser, 2020). Students should also reflect on these dimensions as they form their professional identity, a crucial element of graduate employability (Jackson, 2016).

Generational transformation is required in the way that the hospitality workforce is attracted, developed and retained if a sustainable future for the industry is to be realised. The hospitality industry has a history of struggling to retain staff, a problem that has been exacerbated and become more visible in the post-covid years. In addition, early career attrition reflects the challenges that hospitality graduates face. In response to these challenges, the design of a hospitality management course in a Victorian tertiary institution was motivated by a desire to develop a sense of vocational identity and belonging in the graduate cohort. Vocational identity, which refers to a sense of self derived from one's work or occupation (Chan, 2020), has been identified by researchers as benefitting both employers and employees in a number of ways. These include increased employee job satisfaction and motivation; higher productivity and enhanced job performance; and clarity in job role and responsibility. Research has also shown that vocational identity guides workers' practices and influences their performance, or competence (Klotz, et al. 2014). As a result, identifying strategies in tertiary education that effectively develop a sense of vocational identity are expected to positively contribute to both employee performance and long-term career commitment.

Generational transformation is required in the way that the hospitality workforce is attracted, developed and retained if a sustainable future for the industry is to be realised. The hospitality industry has a history of struggling to retain staff, a problem that has been exacerbated and become more visible in the post-covid years. In addition, early career attrition reflects the challenges that hospitality graduates face. In response to these challenges, the design of a hospitality management course in a Victorian tertiary institution was motivated by a desire to develop a sense of vocational identity and belonging in the graduate cohort. Vocational identity, which refers to a sense of self derived from one's work or occupation (Chan, 2020), has been identified by researchers as benefitting both employers and employees in a number of ways. These include increased employee job satisfaction and motivation; higher productivity and enhanced job performance; and clarity in job role and responsibility. Research has also shown that vocational identity guides workers' practices and influences their performance, or competence (Klotz, et al. 2014). As a result, identifying strategies in tertiary education that effectively develop a sense of vocational identity are expected to positively contribute to both employee performance and long-term career commitment.

This workshop will develop your knowledge and skills for designing education programs for falls prevention research. It will include enhancing your skills in how to critique, develop, implement, measure and report educational interventions and outcomes.

This is a presentation that was given at a VATL LIT Workshop, sharing the experiences of Holmesglen Library in setting up an Institutional Repository.