189 Letter from Ángeles Rubio Gil

Dear future women tourism researchers,

The tourism research has helped me achieve my main dreams as a woman, sociologist, teacher, writer, journalist, it is now up to me to give back as much as I have received to the tourism sector and the people, especially my teachers, who taught me to wander through life in a relationship of trust that is the basis of research and education. To continue with this reciprocal commitment, together with future researchers, I count on your help.

First of all, I must recommend not paying attention to the voices that underestimate the tourism sector or that consider their study to be of little academic interest. From both sociology and economics, interpretations have sometimes been produced that include them in the field of personal services and as a non-productive sector, when the opposite is true. Its multi-disciplinarity, the pioneering nature of its information systems (Big Data, OTAS, CRS, Revenue management, etc.) and its multiplier factor have an impact on all other sectors and therefore, on wealth and employment.

At the origin of the travel and hospitality industry is also that of intercultural communication among peoples, of trade and finance that gave rise to development on a global scale. In addition, tourist professions, similar to the fact of being born a woman, have ways of seeing and being in the world that humanity needs. An activity with tasks that may seem less prestigious, it has a more bearable, breathable, welcoming and meaningful life in its hands. It is a necessity in today’s world, which also promises to help reconcile leisure and the regenerative development of the planet.

Finally, tourism has ceased to be just a transit sector, if not a ‘cushion’ against temporary or structural unemployment in other economic sectors. The new forms of tourism and the exponential growth of tourism studies have contributed to increasingly specialised, technological and scientific careers, thereby giving rise to business niches and new, highly recognised and stimulating professions that make it possible to reconcile family with social life and contact with nature.

About my proposal as a university professor of tourism marketing, for success in a global world and permanent change, it has to do with a greater connection of professional goals with the circular time of women, wherein the needs of each stage of life and care for the environment are respected. It is a circular dynamic that implies adaptation to change and periodic regeneration, also sensitivity to express one’s own expectations but first to understand those of others:

1. Think about what your purpose is, the one that reconciles what you need with what the world needs and that your proposal is clear, concise and confers value.
2. Have independence of criteria but work as a team or network; do not be alone.
3. Take advice and reference from the best teachers and their jobs, professional performance, ethics and emotional intelligence to face relationships and challenges.
4. Research is a way of thinking and living in a way that is consistent with reality, in the face of any adversity: Investigate!
5. Excellence is in your mind. Think carefully because we are what we think, say and work. Prioritise quality over quantity because success calls for success.
6. Do not let emotions cloud your mind. Located ego gives as much importance to success as it does to failure (from which one learns without raising suspicion).
7. Register your intellectual property but recognise the work of your predecessors. The one who knows the most is the one who reads and learns the most and best from others. Ideas are in the air.
8. Project your lifestyle where vocation and conciliation make your work a moment of pleasure every day, and success will come alone and many times.
9. Your capital is attention. Take advantage of time with attention to what you do, do not start a project before finishing another.
10. Do not wait for inspiration. Work during the hours when you have more energy. The social sciences are not works of fiction but a matter of method.
11. In research, it is easier to do well doing what needs to be done at each stage of the research rather than doing it quickly and poorly.
12. If you have a good idea, do it but with discretion and diplomacy. Intelligence offends.
13. ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ not before yourself! Abnegation is NOT healthy, love (also for work) must be so.

And these are the 13 ideas that I hope, like the 13 months of women with their 13 moons to sow projects, in the logic of nature, continue to yield us much fruit and bring us good luck. We are our way!

Ángeles Rubio-Gil

NONNOBIS-URJC Social Research (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos), Spain