Open Educational Resources

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that, through permissions granted by the copyright holder, allow others to use, distribute, keep, or make changes to them. Our open textbooks are openly licensed using a Creative Commons license, and are offered in various e-book formats free of charge, or as printed books that are available at cost.

This textbook has been adapted and remixed from a variety of sources — faculty from across the US and Canada who led the way in creating the first OER resources in the hospitality and tourism field. It is particularly inspired by Introduction to Tourism and Hospitality in B.C. by Morgan Wescott and Wendy Anderson.  Their book, which focuses on British Columbia’s hospitality and tourism industry, served as an excellent source and model. With this version, my aim was to follow that model using global, national, and local context, often highlighting New York State and Hudson Valley hospitality businesses and organizations.

This first edition OER textbook is a work in progress. The next edition (planned for Fall 2025) will include more images, embedded videos, interactive H5P activities, accessible slides, and profiles of hospitality and tourism leaders. I welcome any and all feedback. Feel free to contact me at maureen.gittelman@sunydutchess.edu

OER Sources

The following source materials, licensed as CC-BY-NC were adapted, reused, and remixed to create this textbook:

Wescott, Morgan and Wendy Anderson. Introduction to Tourism and Hospitality in BC – 2nd Edition. BC Campus, 2021. https://opentextbc.ca/introtourism2e

Douglass, Christy. All Are Welcome: An Introduction to the Hospitality Industry. UC Davis Library, the California State University. https://workforce.libretexts.org/Workbench/All_Are_Welcome%3A_An_Introduction_to_the_Hospitality_Industry

Milwood, Pauline. A Pop-up Restaurant Business Guide for Capstone Hospitality Entrepreneurship Education. The Pennsylvania State University School of Hospitality Management, 2022. https://psu.pb.unizin.org/popuprestaurantbusinessguide/

Poff, Ron and Stephen J. Skripak. Fundamentals of Business, 4th edition. Blacksburg, VA: Pamplin College of Business in association with Virginia Tech Publishing, 2023. https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/fundamentalsofbusiness4e/

Egan, Beth. Introduction to Food Production and Service. The Pennsylvania State University School of Hospitality Management. https://psu.pb.unizin.org/hmd329/

Lumen Learning. Principles of Marketing. 2016. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/waymakerintromarketingxmasterfall2016/chapter/about-this-course/

Shields, Kerri. Customer Centric Strategy, 1st Edition. 2021. eCampusOntario. https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/customercentricstrategy/

A Note About AI Use

Most chapter content has been reused, remixed, and adapted from the existing OER materials listed above. The text also includes newly written content to fill in gaps as needed to meet course learning outcomes. Some portions — specifically chapter learning objectives and end-of-chapter key takeaways  — were written with the assistance of generative AI tools.