Professor Judith Mair: Motherhood, Migration and a Career in Tourism

In this episode of Tourism Matters, I’m joined by Professor Judith Mair, Academic Director and Associate Dean (Education) at The Hotel School Australia, Southern Cross University.

Judith’s career began in Scotland, where she studied languages before finding her way into tourism through visitor information, VisitScotland, tour operations, marketing and hotel business development. After becoming a mother, she moved into academia, completing a PhD and later building a research career across tourism, hospitality and events.

In this conversation, Judith shares what it was like to rethink her career after motherhood, move from Scotland to Australia with a young family, and build a new professional life through networks, research and teaching.

We also explore Judith’s research into events, sustainability, climate change, mega-event legacies and the social value of events, including the harder-to-measure impacts like community pride, belonging and what we lovingly describe as the “vibe”.

Later in the episode, Judith talks through The Hotel School’s flexible delivery model, including six-week terms, reduced cognitive load, industry-connected curriculum and paid internships designed to help students move more smoothly into tourism and hospitality careers.

This is a conversation about careers, education, events, motherhood, migration and why tourism and hospitality remain deeply human industries, even as technology and AI continue to change the way we work. 

What You’ll Take Away From This Episode

•  Why tourism careers often evolve through curiosity, opportunity and reinvention rather than a fixed plan. 
•  How Judith moved from languages into tourism, and then from industry into academia. 
•  Why motherhood can change a career path without diminishing it. 
•  The importance of networks when rebuilding or redirecting a tourism career. 
•  How events create value beyond economic impact, including pride, identity, belonging and social connection. 
•  Why tourism and event research needs to be easier for industry to access and use. 
•  How The Hotel School Australia’s flexible teaching model is designed around the real lives of students. 
•  Why paid internships can help students graduate with both qualifications and meaningful experience. 
•  Judith’s perspective on AI, automation and the irreplaceable role of human service in hospitality. 

About Professor Judith Mair

Professor Judith Mair is Academic Director and Associate Dean (Education) at The Hotel School Australia, Southern Cross University. Judith’s research aims to understand and enhance the positive impacts of tourism and events on the communities and societies which host them. 

Her research expertise lies in fields including mega-event legacies, the future of
events, the links between events and social connectivity, and the potential impacts of climate change on the events sector. She has published over 60 refereed articles in international journals and has worked with the International Olympics Olympic Committee and the Queensland Government on projects including event legacies, understanding social impacts of tourism and events, and assessing the impacts of climate change on the sector.

Connect with Judith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-judith-mair-29778a2a/

Organisations Referenced

•  The Hotel School Australia: https://hotelschool.scu.edu.au/
•  Southern Cross University: https://www.scu.edu.au/
•  VisitScotland: https://www.visitscotland.com/
•  University of Strathclyde: https://www.strath.ac.uk/
•  Victoria University: https://www.vu.edu.au/
•  Monash University: https://www.monash.edu/
•  University of Queensland: https://www.uq.edu.au/
•  Centre for Events and Festivals: https://www.eventsandfestivals.org/

Episode Chapters

 00:00 Introduction to Professor Judith Mair
 01:37 Welcome and getting to know Judith
 03:49 Growing up in Scotland
 04:53 Studying languages and early career ideas
 06:13 Discovering tourism through visitor information
 08:52 Working in Scotland’s tourism industry
 10:31 Motherhood and rethinking her career
 12:04 Moving from Scotland to Australia
 14:25 Rebuilding a career through networks
 18:02 Research into events, sustainability and climate change
 20:36 Event legacies and social impact
 23:48 Measuring the “vibe” of major events
 25:40 Moving into teaching and academia
 31:50 Joining The Hotel School Australia
 33:25 Judith’s current role at Southern Cross University
 36:37 The Hotel School’s flexible delivery model
 40:29 Paid internships and industry connection
 43:43 Career advice for parents and career changers
 46:23 AI, hospitality and the value of human service
 49:23 Carmen’s closing reflections

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome friends to the Tourism Matters Podcast, where I, calm and bold, explore the people, careers, and ideas shaping the tourism industry today. This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with the delightful Professor Judith Mayer. Judith is the Academic Director and Associate Dean Education at the Hotel School Australia, Southern Cross University. Officially taking out the longest job title of any guest I've had on the podcast so far. So, congratulations to you, Judith. In our conversation, you'll hear us walk through Judith's career, including the first decade spent working in the tourism industry in Scotland, how she reinvented herself when she became a mother, and what it was like moving to the other side of the world with a young family. Hats off, Judith. We also do a little deep dive into some of the research Judith has undertaken during her academic career and wind up the conversation hearing about the hotel school's unique mode of delivery, which personally I feel really suits the needs of the modern student. Just before we kick off, just a quick note. So if that sounds like something you'd like in your inbox, you can subscribe over at my website, carbonbold.com. Please enjoy the conversation, and I'll see you at the end to give my two bobs and my key takeaways. Professor Judith Mayer. Welcome, welcome to the Tourism Matters Podcast. Thank you for being here with me today. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, you're welcome. Right, so we're going to kick things off with a couple of quick get-to-know Judith questions. So Judith, when you're traveling, which I feel like you do quite a lot of, um, are you window seat, middle seat, or aisle seat on the plane? Where are you going?

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I'm definitely window seat. I'm window seat of reasons. Firstly, I'm not very tall. And secondly, on a long halt flight, if anyone's going to be disturbing anyone, they're not going to be disturbing me. So that's that's my choice. I like to curl up and just keep myself to myself.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Do you know I've not had anyone yet give that as the reason for wanting the window seat? You don't want to be disturbed, but how do you feel about disturbing other people on the way out? You're okay with it. Yeah, sometimes that has to happen. Oh wow. Okay, excellent. And tell me, when you are uh, you know, staying in a hotel and you're at the hotel buffet breakfast, where are you, where are you headed in the morning? What's going on your plate or in your bowl, Judith?

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Whatever is unhealthiest normally, because um I try to eat healthily at home. And then when you see the big buffet spreads, that's your opportunity to have, you know, I don't know, bacon and eggs, chocolate pastries, all these things that I wouldn't normally eat.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

I am 100% there with you, Judith. It's like I don't know this person when I'm standing at the hotel by fi breakfast. In fact, I don't even normally eat breakfast. But yeah, saying everything there in front of you, you just want to try a little bit of everything. Yeah. Do you have a go-to?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Um, not really. Uh it depends where I am in the world. Yeah. So in Asia, I love all the the sort of the soups and noodles that you get at breakfast. Um, in Europe it's usually things like um the cheese and the you know the nice bread.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

So yeah, it depends a bit where I am.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Bit of local fare. Yeah. All right, Judith. Um, I'm gonna hazard a guess here and say that you didn't grow up uh in Australia. Good guess. Yes, I am from Scotland. So um can we go back to young Judith? Can you tell me a little bit about your upbringing and um schooling and then you sort of um what you wanted to do when you finished school? Let's start there.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Yeah, sure. So I come from um just outside a town in the west coast of Scotland. Uh the town's called Dunun and it's in an area called Argyll, which is basically the south of the the Western Highlands of Scotland. So it was quite a countryfied upbringing. Um, we had to travel quite a long way for you know to go to the the big shops if we wanted to go to supermarkets or if we wanted to go to um Marks and Spencer's, you know, that was a day out. So it was uh it was quite different to where I live now in the middle of a big city.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Um when I was at school, I was generally quite a good student. I enjoyed school, but my thing that I really liked was languages and I did them quite well at school. So when I left school, I went to university in Edinburgh to study languages. I did uh uh I can't even remember the full title now. It's uh a bachelor of interpreting and translating, and my two languages were French and German. So I did uh it's an honours degree. I did my four years of which at university, of which one year was spent abroad. I went to um Germany for six months to speak and practice my German, and then I went actually went to Belgium, to the French-speaking part of Belgium, uh, to speak and practice my French.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Uh and it was I really enjoyed it. Um I it was hard. Uh yeah, it's it's it's hard to do well in languages. Yeah. But I did enjoy it. And when I graduated, I did a little placement in Brussels with the European Union um in the translation division, uh, which I also really enjoyed. But it then occurred to me that it's incredibly difficult to get that work as as an ongoing career. There are, you know, I I learned at university to be the simultaneous interpreters that you see at the United Nations and the European community meetings. Um, but yeah, there's just not that many positions available, and it's extremely hard and stressful. So I decided that maybe I'll just take a little bit of time out and think about what do I actually want to do. And my first job, which was just a casual job, was working in the Visitor Information Centre in Princess Street in Edinburgh. And I got that job partly at least because I could speak foreign languages, and it's really useful for the visitors to be able to, you know, to ask questions in their own language.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

But while I was there, I kind of discovered tourism as a possible career and a possible industry. Um, and that's really how I ended up in in the industry. I started uh my first job after that one was with Visit Scotland, where I worked in the information centre. Um, and I it was quite a few years ago now, so we didn't necessarily have access to everything on the internet like we do now. So um, the information centres were a really important way to phone up and get the information that you wanted, or to get sent on to you, etc. So I spent quite a lot of time doing that, and then I ended up being uh um I I I guess a convert, if you want to call it that, to the tourism industry as a as a career path. Uh went back to university and did my master's in tourism uh in Glasgow. Ud West Just Trust Clyde.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Judith, you're not the first guest I've had that studied languages.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Yeah. I think in fact you may be the third or fourth. So this is um a common, seems to be a common thread, which is really interesting and not something I ever would have picked. Um did you go on to study languages just because it was something that you were interested in and you enjoyed, or did you have an idea in those early days of sort of what you thought a career would look like?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Um I guess it was a bit of both. So I I I don't think that careers advice was necessarily that good at school in those days. Um so you know, they they kind of said, Well, what are you good at? And said languages, and they sort of said, go and study languages then. But I did have the idea that I might be able to live and work abroad, uh, in uh I I guess I thought perhaps France or or Germany or or maybe Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, something like that. And had you travelled much in your childhood? Um, not a huge amount um in terms of leisure travel, but my father was in the merchant navy, and so we used to sometimes travel to other parts of the UK when his ship was in, because he'd be away for maybe six to eight months at a time. But if the ship was calling into a port somewhere in, you know, in London or whatever, then we would sometimes go down there.

unknown 8:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Wow. Okay. So um after converting to tourism, which I love the term, I'm not going to steal that. Um so you went on, sorry, did you say you went on and did a master's? I did. Yeah. I did a master's slide. Ah, right. And this was in Edinburgh?

SPEAKER_01 9:07

No, that was in Glasgow. So I'd moved to Glasgow by then. Yeah. Um after I did my master's, I worked in the tourism industry for about 10 years um in uh visitor centres. Um, and I worked in um I worked for the Edinburgh Woolen Mill, which uh it runs a lot of shops but also runs visitor centres in Scotland where people can go in and find out about their clan history and their tartan and all that stuff. Oh, very nice. It was kind of interesting. And then I also worked for um, I was uh marketing in marketing for uh a tour operator, very small niche tour operator that organized tours to the Scottish Islands because it's quite complex to do multiple islands just because of the ferries and accommodation um availability, etc. So yeah, so I did that. And then I worked for a hotel consortium as business development manager.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Wow, that sounds like quite a breadth of experience over a 10-year period. Yeah, which is very um not unusual at all in the in the tourism industry. Yeah, right. Um, okay, so 10 years sort of working, you know, in the in the well, I shouldn't probably say in the guts, but I guess it kind of is working in the industry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Um and then what happens after that? So after that I had a baby and um I decided that I didn't want to go work back to work um full-time. And so I thought about going back part-time, but I couldn't really find anything that kind of you know grabbed me that that I wanted to do. And at that point I had investigated the option of doing a PhD because I'd already done an honours degree and a master's degree, so I did have the qualifications to get into PhD and I'd always enjoyed university and you know I kind of felt that I had uh a bit of a home there as well as in the tourism industry. So that's when I did my PhD, which I did part-time when my kids were younger. So I started just after the first one was born and I finished just after he started school.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Wow. Um, if you don't mind answering the question, what age group would you have been at this point?

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Um when I uh early 30s.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Yeah, okay. Yeah. I just um yeah, I I can m myself um lumped into that. You know, I had a child and then struggled to find part-time, you know, child-friendly work. Um so I actually went off and worked in events for a while. But um, yeah, again, you're not my first guest that has had to sort of rethink their career um due to motherhood. Yeah, yeah. So it's lovely to hear these stories that um really highlight that becoming a parent or becoming mother doesn't mean you need to walk away from the tourism industry. Yeah, so change of approach. Yeah, that's right. So you completed your PhD and um what what happened after that?

SPEAKER_01 12:14

So I finished my PhD um at also at the University of South Clyde in Glasgow. And um when I finished that, um my husband and I we had talked about potentially having to move because his job was a little bit uncertain, and um it sort of came to the situation where his work was not really going to be continuing and we would have to move somewhere. Um and he was born in Australia and we've always had the option uh to emigrate to Australia. We'd never particularly felt the need to exercise that option, but we decided we would give it a go. Um and when we eventually made it over to Australia, the children were seven and five. Um it was a bit of a it was a bit of a big decision, but I mean we always knew that at the end of the day Scotland would still be there. So yeah, if it didn't work out, we could just go home. Had you been to Australia before? No. No.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

I know it was a big leak into the unknown. Huge. Um where did you go? Brisbane, where you are now or no.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

We I went to Melbourne originally because my husband had some family there, and so that was made it a lot easier for us as a first uh first entry point into Australia. Wow.

unknown 13:27

All right.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Stayed in London. Oh, yes. Yeah, I stayed in Melbourne for nine years and then up to Brisbane after that.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Okay. Um so you land in Melbourne um with a seven-year-old and a five-year-old. And uh fairly recent.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

I'm not sure I would necessarily suggest to people follow characters. Well, that's exactly what it was.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine I've moved a number of times with my just one son, and yeah, that's enough. None of them have been to the other side of the world, um, to a country I've never been to. But um, what was your game plan when you arrived in Australia? Did you sort of get into looking for work straight away or fairly soon afterwards?

SPEAKER_01 14:16

The plan was um my husband went straight into the workforce, but I stayed at home for a little while just to keep an eye on the kids to make sure they settled in the school and that all was well. And then after that, I started to look for work in the academic area because I had my PhD and I had um some experience of doing tutoring and things while I was doing that. And um I was able to use my and I'm sure this doesn't surprise you in the slightest, my connections, my networking, um, which is always important in the tourism industry, to um connect with some people at Victoria University in Melbourne, um, particularly Professor Brian King, who was a former Strathclyde University graduate. Um so that was that was helpful um in terms of getting, you know, getting in touch. And that's where I got my first academic job. It was just uh what we would call a research assistant, so just basically doing whatever work was available on a casual basis.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Um and I did that for a while before a more permanent job popped up.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Right. Okay, so a couple of key takeaways here for listeners is that um, as we've heard in podcasts before, you know, your career is not siloed from the rest of your life by any means. Um, you know, like if your husband's job is unstable and it means that you have to move to the other side of the world, then obviously your career has to ebb and flow with this. Um and yes, again, of course, using your networks and um, you know, but putting yourself out there and and um yeah, uh leveraging the people that you've met and supported. It's it's and yeah, and I I've said this a lot, but I'm sure it's the same in many industries, but it is more important than anything career-wise, in my opinion, um in my experience for the tourism industry.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Like it's yeah, it's I totally agree. And I think it's because the industry is so diverse. Yeah that you know, you you you make contacts with people in so many different areas of the tourism industry, which then allows you to, you know, to talk to people one day who are in events the next day, they're at the airport, the day after that, they're in hotels, then they're in government and public policy. And it's just it's just so wide. Um I kind of feel like that's where the difference is between the tourism industry and some other types of of occupation or our other sort of economic sectors.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Yeah, well, that's so true. And um, you know, as you've highlighted already, you know, um we're we're all like that. Our careers are all like that. We're all bouncing around and moving from one sort of subsector of the tourism industry to another. And not only that, but geographically as well, we are um not um perhaps as bound um as as some people that are more um in a more structured industry, I suppose. I don't think I've had a single podcast guest so far that has only lived and worked in one country. It's just yeah, no, I wouldn't be more surprised.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Yeah. And it's it's it's a real plus as well. And something that you know we talk to our students a lot about is yeah, you know, if you if you qualify as a lawyer in Queensland, you can only practice law in Queensland. Um, you know, if if you qualify as a teacher in Queensland, you you teach in Queensland, you have to go and apply other certification or recognition of your qualifications before you can even teach anywhere else in Australia. Whereas if you qualify with tourism, hotel management, something like that, you can work anywhere in the world.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yeah, that's so true, Judith. I hadn't um thought about it like that before. Yeah, yeah, that is so true. Um, all right, great. So let's pop back to your career. Um right. So research assistant.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

I was um lucky enough to get a position as a postdoctoral research fellow in Victoria University. So it was a university scheme, and so it was a two-year uh contract just to do research. And I picked as my research topic um something that flowed on from my PhD, which had been about um conferences and conventions. Oh, good, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Yes, I was gonna ask you about that.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

My uh postdoctoral fellowship was about um the impacts of sustainability and climate change for conference and events, for business events generally. Um and that was quite a long time ago, uh 2008, 2009. Um and it wasn't really something that a lot of people were talking about at that stage. So I guess that's that's and a lot of my work since then has been about sustainability and trying to understand events and sustainability, and that's kind of where it came from.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Judith, so if that sort of wasn't the hot topic that it kind of has evolved to be these days, why was that on your radar? Why did you choose to uh why did you choose that topic?

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Um well, I can lots of different reasons, but I sort of was initially interested, and it came back to um the kind of discussions that you have over the dinner table at home, was my husband who worked for a big multinational corporation talking about the fact that they were cutting down the number of um sort of in-person business trips that their employees were doing and were bringing in this new idea of video conferencing, which back then was still relatively new and not particularly reliable either. But I kind of thought even back then, gosh, that's going to make a big difference to the tourism industry because of the number of people who travel for business. And if we see uh a big difference in the number of people who are no longer traveling for business meetings, what does that mean for the industry? And I guess that's kind of where I started, although I ended up getting more interested in the more about the the psychology and the behavior of people when they choose to attend business events. Um, but yeah, so that's where it started from. Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Dinner table conversation. Um that's true. It's just life, isn't it? Like we are we are our careers and and yeah, it's we are one in the same. Um, and I have so many questions that I really want to ask about that, but I'm going to not. But I would like to come back to what your or it's now a good time maybe to touch on what you found or um you know what your what your research found.

unknown 20:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Sure. Yeah, maybe we can do that because I'd love to hear.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

I've been looking at events and sustainability for for as I say quite a long time now, probably um getting on for nearly 20 years, which is I'd rather it wasn't quite as long as that. Um and I guess sort of over time the the patterns of what's important to people are are shifting. And I think that's interesting. That initially events, uh particularly business events, were seen as um drivers of economic impact. You know, so you bring in a big conference and we'll get lots of people and they'll spend money. And in order to bring in the big conference, we need to build the big convention center. And it was very much a financial transaction and an economic impact model. Uh, and you know, that's that's important and I wouldn't try to suggest it's not, but I think over time people have started to become more interested in initially the environmental impacts. So the environmental impacts of massive convention centres as buildings and bits of infrastructure themselves, um, the environmental impacts of all the people that travel in order to attend business events and laterally have been looking at all types of events, mega events and festivals and everything. Um, and also how the environmental impacts might or might not change people's attendance behaviour. So, are people more interested in uh traveling somewhere that has uh strong uh environmental policies, for example, or are people not traveling? As much. So in the academic world, there's a bit of a trend for universities to restrict the amount of conference travel, for example, that academics do. And partly there's a financial motive, but there's also it's also partly to do with reducing the carbon emissions and making their ESG reporting a little bit better. So that's kind of the environmental side. And then the bit that I find most interesting but hardest is the social impacts. So looking at how, and this probably applies more to the mega events like the Olympic Games, but really to all events is the local communities that live in the cities and the towns that host these big events are generally the ones that have to deal with the negative social impacts, whether that's traffic, crowding, noise, congestion, all these kinds of things, or you know, if it's a big festival, a bit of antisocial behavior perhaps. But very few people have looked at how we can use these events to have positive impacts on communities in terms of giving local people volunteering opportunities that they can put on their resume, you know, where they don't have a lot of work experience, or upskilling people in administration or in first aid, or you know, something like that, where you you're actually contributing back to the local economy. And then there's also just the the extremely intangible things about events which are uh people describe as like the vibe. You know, when there's a really big event in town, the vibe was great, which is you know, it's it's it's completely accurate and it's completely impossible to measure. I guess that's what I'm interested now in is how do we how can we start looking at ways to say that this is a benefit of events and it's it's something that we can actually calculate and point to rather than just saying it brings in money. Yeah, I think you need a vibometer.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

I think this is tough. That could work. If you've got one, that could work. I don't. Um, yeah, well, this is oh I just want to go down so many rabbit holes, but I'm not going to. But I will just say that I, you know, after having lived in well, just out of Hobart for the last six years, you know, and experiencing, you know, winter and what the Dark Mofo Festival can do um for a t for a city. And um, you know, I worked for Destination Southern Tasmania who spearheaded to the um Paint the Town Red campaign, which was part of or ran alongside Dark Mofo, and that all the buildings would, you know, light up red um in support. And it was it's giving me goosebumps thinking about it, you know, in the deep depths of winter to drive through Hobart, you know, and it's dark at five o'clock. And so you're leaving work for the day and you start to see the yeah, the buildings light up and you start to see all the stuff sort of popping up around town. Um, it's definitely a vibe. Like it is.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Um it's things like um pride, um, I didn't a lot. But they're again are very difficult things to actually categorize.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Yeah, yeah. Viber meter, Judith. You can have that idea. Note that down. Oh, sorry. Try and have a serious conversation, I do. Where's the fun in that? Yeah. We've got plenty of other serious places in the world, it's just not one of them. All right. You that was a two-year timeline for you to to yeah, okay. And so what happened after that?

SPEAKER_01 25:43

After that, I did some um work for uh Victoria University as a lecturer. So that was my first position where I was actually in the teaching side of things as opposed to just the research side of things. Right. And then uh a job popped up at Monash University in Melbourne, and so I went for that and got that. And that was sort of uh that was like a grown-up job, if you know what I mean. It was uh full-time, you know, lecturing and taking responsibility for uh for developing the units and for all the assessment. Um so that that was uh it was a big jump, I guess, in terms of the amount of responsibility, but I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed teaching.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

And you you do how how did you find that transition into teaching?

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Um into the actual teaching itself was I didn't find difficult. Um and I think a lot of people in tourism have got the kinds of personalities where they're happy to talk, they're happy to chat, and they're happy to, you know, talk about examples of when this happened or when that happened. So the the standing up in class and trying to bring the the teaching material to life with examples, uh that that uh I came quite naturally. Um I guess the the harder part is um the the administration and and the the paperwork and the marking and things like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

The good stuff. Oh yeah. Um what yeah, can you put timestamp this? Where where are we?

SPEAKER_01 27:12

So that was 2010 that I moved to Monash. And I stayed at Monash. Um I became a senior lecturer after a couple of years at Monash and uh stayed there till 2014. And then I moved up to Brisbane and the main reason for that was because I wanted to go and work for the University of Queensland, which had a really good reputation um in terms of um academic output and research. It's a very research-intensive university and Monash is quite research-intensive too, but I yeah, I felt that I wanted to get into uh I I suppose to get into a critical mass of people because UQ has and still has one of the biggest sort of groups of faculty teaching in in the tourism hospitality and events area.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

I think Queensland pretty much has the biggest group of anything related to tourism.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Quite possibly, yes. Those they they they take it quite seriously up here.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Yeah, lots of good stuff happens in the tourism industry in Queensland. Lots of good stuff happens in every state and territory. But um, yeah, there is, as you said, a critical mass in in Queensland.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Okay, so you went up there and you and you um secured a job with the University of Queensland. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Yeah. So I stayed with the University of Queensland for uh about 10 years. I became uh an associate professor while I was there and uh did quite a few sort of what I found very interesting things, different projects, research, um uh sort of service. So, you know, within academia we talk about a service component of your workload, which is um it can be things like attending committees, uh you know, not attending committees, sorry, being on serving on them. Yeah. Actually, yeah, doing something, not just attending. Um also external engagement with industry partners, um journal reviewing, so the entire you know, academic publishing industry requires peer review. And yeah. So there's all that kind of thing that fits in, and then with your teaching, that's another sort of component, and then your research, your own research is sort of the final component. So I learned a lot there uh about everything, research teaching and and all the service type things.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Yeah, I just will point in, um not point in, add in here. Um if anyone I I wanted to ask you about academia, but I'm not going to because I've had a previous conversation with Anne Hardy where she kind of pulls apart the life of academia. So if anyone is interested in knowing more about what that looks like, um I won't put you through having to explain it to me as well, Judith. Um I can refer to the conversation I've had with Anne Hardy. Um, because it is, in my opinion, uh the the research is so um important for the tourism industry. But for somebody like me who spent their life working in the industry and has had no exposure to academia or very little, um, it's sometimes can be like the you're talking another language or speaking another language.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Yeah. There's there's definitely an issue with making the uh the research accessible to a wider as wide an audience as you possibly can.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Yeah. Some of it is just so incredibly relevant. Well, I'm sure a lot of it is so incredibly relevant, but you know, could be um if it was easily digestible um and readily uh readily available. I really I believe that uh tourism operators could really benefit from being able to access it and understand it and implement it in their businesses.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

And I might just jump in there and say, um, just as a bit of an aside, that I'm part of uh a group called the Center for Events and Festivals, CEF.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Um and CEF is uh intended to try to overcome some of that in the events space. So it's a group of um industry practitioners and academics who um try to make sure that whatever research we do in uh academia is sort of made into an accessible format. Uh, and we've got um I don't know how many. There's a there's a board of practitioners and a board of professors. I'm on the board of professors, but it's about making the academic research and events accessible to events practitioners.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

That's for anyone's interest, yeah. I'll definitely uh link to it in the show notes, Judith. So that's yeah, because um yeah, we need something like that for tourism. I think so. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, we definitely do. Um all right, so 10 years at UQ. Yeah. Um and then you're obviously not at UQ anymore. So um what what what does that transition look like?

SPEAKER_01 31:59

So after spending such a long time in that research intense environment, and I did enjoy the research element of it, I just felt that I did not get to spend very much time as a teacher. And I had a particularly in the latter stages of my time at UQ, I had a couple of service roles. One of them was discipline leader, and that essentially meant administr you know, additional administrative uh responsibilities, which were um and the reduction to compensate for that came out of teaching. So I actually didn't do very much teaching in the last few years at UQ, and I kind of thought, I enjoy teaching. Um and I I I I I f I felt I missed it a bit. Uh so that that was part of it. Um and then when I saw the opportunity, so I'm currently with the Hotel School Australia uh at Southern Cross University, and it just it just does things differently. It's a different mindset here um than UQ, partly because um UQ is an enormous institution with I think 50,000 students or some vast amount like that. Um and then you know, Southern Cross is is is much smaller, it's a regional university, it's very much about tailoring the education to meet the needs in the regions. And tourism is so important in in the regions of Australia that you know I kind of thought that was something I could really get behind.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

Okay, so what is your current role for my listeners at um Southern Cross?

SPEAKER_01 33:25

So um I am I possibly have the longest job title in the university. I am the Academic Director and Associate Dean Education for the Hotel School Australia at Southern Cross University.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Well, bravo. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Sounds good. Yeah, so there's there's really two elements to that. There's the academic director part of it, and then there's the associate dean part of it. They involve the same sort of work, but one reports, the director reports to the the rest of the staff at the hotel school. It's about making sure that the staff are are across what I'm doing and what policies are, and the other half is the associate dean um education, is where I basically report back to Southern Cross and let them know what the hotel school are up to. So it's a very much a liaison role. Uh it's almost entirely taken up with curriculum quality. So it's making sure that we're teaching the right things, that we're teaching them at the right levels, that we're including the right content that's relevant to industry, but is pitched at the right level for, you know, whichever level the student's at. Um, we do all the way from a diploma, a one-year diploma in um global hotel management, all the way up to a master's degree and everything in between. So part a big part of it is making sure that the content is pitched at the right level to meet the so we we have to meet the Australian quality framework. I should know what that stands for, AQF. Um different AQF levels uh depending on what the the diploma or course program that the students are learning. Um I take part um in the industry advisory board. I sit on that with our our dean of the hotel school, and that's where we run our curriculum by our industry, get some advice on what's still current, what may needs to be changed, what might be coming up that we can look to to incorporate into our teaching going forward. So it's a very I find it a very um is a very important role.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

I and I and I feel that, you know, because of that, I feel that I get great value from it.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Yeah. So for my listeners, I came across Judith recently when I was at a industry lunch at the hotel school, or hosted by the hotel school here in Perth. And Judith, you presented to the audience about your curriculum and and how the program is designed. And I was swept off my feet um by how uh the hotel school has sort of embodied sort of bending and flexing to meet the needs of the modern student, and I haven't seen anything like that in another tertiary education provider in our tourism and events space. So um, if it's all right, would you spend a couple of minutes sort of recapping that? Um not that I want it to be a plug for the hotel school, but I was genuinely that that's why I'm I'm sitting here talking to you because I was very impressed by it. Um so yeah, I'd love for my listeners to sort of hear a highlight reel of what I heard and how the hotel school is different and really does sort of meet the needs of the students.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Great. Well, uh thank you, and I'm really glad you you enjoyed that presentation. It's something we we do across Australia at various industry gatherings, and it is almost always met with you know a really good reception. It's just very different. So in the hotel school, we teach in the Southern Cross model, which is part of what makes us different, and I'll talk to that in a second. And we also have extremely close links with the tourism and hospitality industry, which means that when it comes to placements and work-integrated learning, we can offer a really good uh opportunities or you know, really good products for our students. So if I start with the way that Southern Cross teaches, instead of having two semesters a year, which is quite common, or even three trimesters, which higher education institutions institutions choose to use, we have six terms. So each term is six weeks for the students, but instead of asking the students to suffer to perhaps have to choose four subjects per semester, which is kind of standard in higher education, we have them do only two subjects for six weeks. So it's much more of a block model. Um it's like an intensive approach to teaching. It helps the students to reduce the cognitive load. And by that we mean that when you're sub, let's say you have a normal traditional semester and you're trying to do four units across or four subjects across that semester, you have four lots of content, you have four lots of assessment that's all due at different times, and it all gets a little bit much sometimes for students to keep track of everything. So we we cut that down in half. It's the same amount of academic content. We haven't changed that. It's just that it's more intensive for the for two subjects for six weeks. Um the other thing that we do is because we offer six terms, students will still only do four subjects in a year, which is the same as they would do anywhere else. They can choose when and where to do those subjects because we teach most of them multiple times a year. So, for example, they might come in term one, which starts in March, they might do two units. In term two, they might do one unit. In term three, they might take a term off. In term four, they might do their final unit, and then term five and term six, they can take off. Or if they want to, they can do one in each of the each, well, they can do one in four of the six. So the amount of flexibility and just in purely in terms of the actual learning and when you do that, I think is something that, and that's across Southern Cross, that's not just a hotel scope. Um, but it's something that seems to help students, and it's helped a lot of the metrics at Southern Cross that they were trying to improve. Things like retention rate, things like um helping students who are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, students from First Nations families, students who are uh first in family to go to university, students from non-English speaking backgrounds. So all these different groups have all been supported and seem to be thriving across Southern Cross from this flexible way of learning. Yeah. Within the hotel school, uh there's another couple of things that we do with the timetabling. So almost always we timetable our courses and our subjects on a Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday because we know that um hospitality workers are far too busy on uh Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays to be doing study. Um and also on Monday, usually that's when they have a little bit of time or a little bit of, you know, maybe a day off. They're more likely to get a day off on a Monday, so that's when we would maybe think that they could be doing some of their academic studies. So in that sense, it's quite flexible for the students to study when they want and also try to try not to get in the way of the part-time work that most of our students are doing. Yeah. Um and then I guess the other thing that we do is um we run mandatory internships. Now, if you do the diploma, which is the one year, there's no mandatory internship. And if you do a graduate certificate or graduate diploma, which are also one year at the postgraduate, they don't have mandatory internships. But the associate degree and the bachelor's degree and the master's degree do. And for each of those programs, it's 600 hours, which is more than many um of our sort of other higher education institutions can offer. And we almost always, I'm gonna say 99% of the time, we get um internships for our students that are paid. So they are doing an in it's an internship, it's a placement because it has academic supervision and there's assessments that they do throughout that time, reflecting on their workplace and things that happened. But it's it's paid because we work so closely with the hotels and the operators that they will come to us and say, okay, we've got um, you know, we we need somebody in front of house. Uh, have you got any students ready for internship? And so they will come, they'll do their internship, they'll be paid for it because they're doing a job that the hotel or the operator needs someone to do. At the same time, they're still getting all the other, you know, sort of benefits that you get of an internship, which is about learning more stuff, broadening your networks, getting experience. So I think those two things can you know combine the way we teach and the way we run internships is is probably what makes the hotel school a bit different.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

Yeah. And it just seems so beautifully curated for the industry. Like, like you just said, the fact that majority of classes are on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Like it just seems that everything is um really thought out, which is yeah, it's very, very refreshing and um mutually beneficial for the students and also for the industry to have access to those, easy access to those students.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

What we often do, especially with the bachelor's students, is that we put the internships as their two final units that they study with us so that if they are enjoying where they are and they're doing well, they can just stay.

unknown 42:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

And that happens so often is that we'll, you know, we'll we'll have the students who'll contact us and say, Yeah, I've been made permanent, or you know, I've I've I've quite often even I've got a promotion because they've already got such a lot of experience that they're as soon as they graduate, they don't not just have a job, but they're actually moving up into team supervisory positions.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

So I guess by that point, you know, they've got the experience and then they've also got the qualifications, you know, if they're doing it at the end. Yeah, that's um yeah, I think that you this is a fantastic model. And like I said, I was really blown away by it. Um so thank you for going a little bit more in depth into that for my listeners. And of course, I'll put links to the hotel school in the show notes. Um right, so that brings us to where you are now in your uh life and career, Judith. You're so perfectly placed to maybe offer a few words of advice or encouragement or reflection um to um listeners um about, you know, yeah, what you've experienced in your career and and what you're seeing in the industry and anything else that you feel like could be useful.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

I mean, I guess one of the things I do feel quite strongly about is that when you first become a mother or a parent, but it does tend to happen more often to mothers, um you you have this break in your career. And I guess it's it's worrying, and it was for me, and I'm sure it is for lots of people because. you don't know what's going to happen. But I I I think looking back, um my my sort of advice or my thoughts would be that it it will still happen. You know, you might take a year out, you might take two years out. It doesn't mean that you know you you're then relegated to doing something you don't want to do. You might have to think about how you approach things a little bit differently. But I I know so many really strong career women who are also mothers and who have also struggled um in that sort of immediate period when when the kids arrive with gosh I can't go back to work straight away or I do go back to work straight away but I worry because my kids are in you know childcare or whatever. And and I think part of it is just you know and and the benefit of hindsight and the benefit of being able to reflect is that it did mean no harm whatsoever. It changed what I ended up doing.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

But that's okay. Uh you know I'm okay with that. And I think a lot of people probably would also be okay with a change in direction. Yeah it's it it wasn't you know I didn't downgrade in any sense. I don't think that I you know I had to downgrade. No I think I think just think it's important that that message gets out there that maybe your career will change a little bit as a result of parenthood but it that it can be a wonderful opportunity to to you know try to go in a slightly different direction.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

And I think it's also a lovely way to highlight um for people that aren't necessarily familiar with the tourism industry or are sort of looking at it from yeah with a young person's eyes is that there's more to the tourism industry than you know um being a tour guide or having to be some sort of front facing you know weekend working evening working there's so it's such a diversity of roles out there that um can support uh a transition into motherhood or parenthood.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

Yeah absolutely um and I guess in terms of what's coming up um something that I think is worrying people um is the amount of AI that we're seeing and it's uh certainly an interesting challenge for us as educators to work out how to actually assess people's ability to have learned anything but that's that's not something I'll go into at the moment because that's what that is a work in progress.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

But I think the the tourism industry and and hospitality generally I think is one of the best places to be because it does it runs on people. So we might automate some back of house things. You know maybe it will be some automation of business processes in the background. And maybe you know I know some places do have um check-in kiosks or you know some kind of AI check-in. So there may be there's potential I think for maybe some reduction in some of the jobs but at the end of the day hospitality is about providing a service to a person or a group of people and it's the humanity and the of that that makes the experience and is I think even more important in service recovery. So if the check-in kiosk stops working you want a person to jump out immediately you want a person that you can say hey this has happened and that person can say I'm so sorry let's let me fix it. Yeah let me let me do this for you and that's that's I think where the the the humanness um you might call it the spitableness of the of the workforce um it that can't be replaced. No it really it just can't and maybe you know maybe you move to another kiosk and it spits out a little thing that says oh sorry you know come to me instead but it's not the same.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

No, it's not the same and um you know I'll leave your very well put thoughts there because otherwise they'll just send us out on another tangent. But yes that's very much my stance is that there is a level of AI proofness um to the industry as a whole and you're right certainly certain aspects of the industry can be automated by AI and look let's be honest great like if your accounting can be automated and your business processes can be automated then great that gives us all some more space to be creative about our visitor experience and um you know how our teams perform um to provide memorable memorable visitor experiences because we know that that's what travelers want you know they want to connection to place and that is through the people and the food and the music and the nature in a place.

SPEAKER_01 48:36

All the all the the the sort of sensual things you know the things that appeal to your senses.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Yeah. All right I think that's a beautiful place to end there Judith unless you have anything else you'd like to any more little nuggets you'd like to um all right well thank you um once again for being here with me today. I will pop your LinkedIn uh handle into the show notes if people would like to connect with you if you're happy with that. And um of course I'll link to the hotel school and um thank you once again. This has been a really lovely conversation. It's so nice to hear what your journey has been and I look forward to following you into the future and seeing what happens next. Thank you so much Karen. No worries. Thank you. My goodness me thank you so much Professor Judith Mayer for sitting down and chatting with me this week. Sometimes I can't help but think I have no business talking to some of the people I talk to on this podcast. What a delightful and intelligent woman. I really really appreciate when uh career professionals like Judith can sit down and speak frankly and openly about the career journey and what that looks like through all stages of life. So thank you once again Judith for the frank and candid conversation. Friends if you enjoyed the episode please share with your friends and colleagues the tourism industry deserves to be seen as a reputable and a viable career choice and it is my aim to use the podcast to help the tourism industry be seen in that light. As always I'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn. If we're not already you can look me up Carmen Bold. Feel free to message me if you think you would be a great guest on the podcast or if you know someone else who would I'm also on the lookout for tourism business owners to come onto the podcast to share their business stories. So feel free to email me or send me a message on LinkedIn and we can have a conversation. And of course be sure to hit all of those buttons like follow subscribe download share whatever they are hit them all. Sharing is caring and until next time let's all remember that tourism matters. I'll see you next week thanks for listening