Bachelor of Tourism

Founded in 1993, the Department of Tourism is one of the earliest-established tourism departments in Anhui Province. It offers three undergraduate specialties, i.e., Tourism Management, Hospitality Management and Human Geography, Urban and Rural Planning, and one college degree program, Tourism Management (Sino- Korean 1.5+1.5 program). The department now has more than 1000 enrolled students and a faculty of 34, including 13 professors and associate professors, 1 Provincial Outstanding Teacher, and more than 10 foreign visiting professors.

At present, the department has Tour Guide Practical Training Room, Catering and Housekeeping Practical Training Room, and Tourism Resource Specimen Room. To enhance the information-based teaching, the department has also installed CIS and soft-wares about Hospitality Management, Travel Agency Management, and Exhibition Management on Humanities and Social Sciences platforms. In addition, Digital Interactive 3D Tour Guide Practical Training Room has been put into use, and Smart Tour Guide Training Room under construction.

Over the years, the teachers have undertaken around 40 projects sponsored by the Provincial Social Science Foundation, China National Tourism Administration, and the Ministry of Education. In addition, they have undertaken over 30 scientific research programs supported by the local government and enterprises. More than 150 papers have been published in academic journals. They have gained a second prize for Excellent Tourism Academic Achievements awarded by China National Tourism Administration, the third prize for Social Science Achievements in Anhui Province, three-second prizes, and two third prizes for Social Science Achievements in Hefei City.

Since 2006，the department has jointly constructed Tourism Management (college degree,1.5+1.5) with Cheju Halla University in Korea. Tourism Management is an undergraduate program of Sino-German Cooperation. Each Year, excellent students pursue their studies in cooperative universities in Germany, the USA, Italy, Holland, and Taiwan of Mainland China.

The students in the department have made excellent achievements in many kinds of competitions including Challenge Cup National Undergraduate Extracurricular Academic Work Competition, Challenge Cup National Undergraduate Business Plan Competition, National Tourism Colleges Service Skills Contest, Anhui Province Undergraduate GIS Ability Competition, Anhui Province Undergraduate Science Innovation Contest.

Hefei University (HFU), previously known as Hefei Union University, is an undergraduate university founded in 1980. It was “born in the era of reform and opening-up, and develops in the period of innovation”. During its early years, the university put forward a school-running mode that features “appropriate tuition, self-job-finding, discipline inlinewith practical needs, and logistics outsourcing”, which aroused great interest of the society and was covered by mainstream media like People’s Daily and Guangming Daily. The university was once honored as a forerunner in China’s Higher Education Reform.

In March 2002, approved by the Ministry of Education, Hefei University was set up based on the previous Hefei Union University, Hefei Institute of Education, and Hefei Normal School. Since then, the university has persisted in its guideline of “serving the local, training students into applied talent and strengthening cooperation with foreign higher-learning institutions”. It has made good use of the experience of the universities of applied sciences in Germany(Fachhochschule) and created a distinctive application-oriented cultivation system with a focus on key factors to improve the ability and skills of students. Thanks to the system reform and implementation thereof, the university has succeeded in producing a great many high-caliber professionals for local development. Since 2009, the students of HFU have won 246 prizes in national sci-tech innovation contests, among which 47 are first prizes and special prizes, and some are even the only one or the first time rewarded to a university in Anhui Province. Moreover, the students have won 118 gold medals, 72 silvers, and 68 bronzes in sports events. HFU was awarded a national second teaching achievement prize with the project “Research, Innovation, and Practice-based on Experience from Applied Talent Training System in German Undergraduate Universities” in 2009, and then the first prize in 2014, which is the top prize to a provincial university of Anhui.