Guilin Institute of Tourism (GIT) was founded in 1985 when there were few public higher learning institutions of this kind across China. The school was upgraded and renamed Guilin Tourism University (GTU) in 2015. The present landscape of GTU is defined by two campuses Canluanand Yanshan, which covers a total land area of about 125 hectares. With its geological expansion, GTU has become not only one of the higher learning institutions of tourism in China who have joined to form a union called the Five-Star League but also the affiliate members of the UNWTO and PATA.Considering its status, the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) has authoritized GTU to be the Guangxi Center of Educating and Training Tourism Professionals from ASEAN.
There are 14 academic divisions in GTU. They are the Tourism and Leisure Management Department, Hotel Management Department, Tourism Foreign Language Department, Tour Guide Department, Department of Commerce, Visual Art Department, Performance Art Department, Tourism Transport and Services Department, Social Sciences Department, TESOL Department, School of Continued Education, School of International Education and Exchange and the GL School of International Hotel Management. 42 programs with 58 professional orientations in line with the main aspects of tourism are offered to 9,000 strong full-time students hailing from the different parts of China and ASEAN.
At the heart of the departments and schools is the faculty team. It is made up of 529 full-time teachers. Among them 49 are professors, 138 associate professors, 30 teachers who have been conferred or are to be conferred PhD degrees, members of the national vocational education and training supervision boards, leading teachers of Guangxi province, and a winner of the Fu Lei French Translation Award. To strengthen the academic prowess, GTU invites preeminent researchers in certain fields and elites from certain industries to give lectures and long-contract jobs are available for qualified experts from other regions and countries; at the same time, its own full time teachers are funded when they go abroad for further learning or other academic activities, accounting for 40%. 50% of the full-time teachers have acquired double qualifications (note: double-qualification teachers hereby refer to those who were seniors with an industry before teaching in a vocational school or who hold industrial certificates through training and test while teaching) or have an industrial experience in one way or another.
In addition to the strength of its faculty team, GTU takes pride in its creative integration of teaching and practice, international collaboration and character cultivation. This boosts the academic achievements: 6 programs have passed the UNWTO TedQual certification; 16 programs have respectively been conferred the titles of Pilot Vocational Program at National Level, Top Quality Program in Guangxi Province and High Quality Program in Guangxi Province; 2 courses have been conferred the title of Model Course at National Level and 15 courses the title of Model Course in Guangxi Province; 1 teaching reform project has been awarded the Second Prize of China and 8 teaching reform projects the Commendation Prize; and there are 12 state-funded or province-funded Model Practice Bases on campus.
Together with education and training, research is put by GTU equally on top of the work agenda. GTU has set up two centers on campus: Guangxi Tourism Research Centerand Guilv Tourism Planning Center. The two centers aim to provide consulting services. GTU has played a key role in more than 30 state-funded or province-funded social science or other research projects and some of theprojects have been initiated with a view to advising on multi-billion-RMB investments. Together with more than 10 city- or county-level entities within or without Guangxi province, GTU has worked on planning tourism development, training tourism professionals and designing local tourism handicrafts as well as on drafting relevant criteria or standards. The total of the projects of this kind surpasses 50.
It is worthy of mentioning that GTU journal Tourism Forum is regarded as a window of the national and international researches on tourism. With its impact on the academic community, Tourism Forum has been ranked as one of the top 10 academic journals of higher learning institutions in Guangxi province for years in row. What is more important, it was voted to be one of the most world-influential Chinese academic journals in 2012.
To sum up, whatever GTU has been working hard at is for the purpose of building itself into a leading school with its own characteristics which provides (more) knowledgeable, (more) skillful and (more) competent professionals for the tourism industry. To achieve the goal, GTU has to often rectify the past, enhance the present and envision the future. At the same time, many other factors must be taken into consideration such as the state and provincial development strategies, especially the Guilin development strategy between 2012 and 2020. Only by doing so can GTU really claim to be a culture-distinctive, industry-predominant, nation-leading and world-renowned tourism school one day in the near future.
