Despite licensed restaurants not being a thing in Tasmania until 1968, hospitality and tourism have grown exponentially to be a key driver of jobs, with visitors spending $3.7 billion in Tasmania in 2025.
According to Tourism Tasmania: "Tourism is one of Tasmania's oldest and most significant industries. It has strengthened communities statewide, creating jobs, growing our economy, supporting infrastructure and enhancing local services, recreational activities and quality of life."
It reports that 50,800 jobs in Tasmania are supported by tourism and tourism brings $1.83 to every dollar invested in the industry.
Helping grow the industry has been the qualified and experienced local workforce behind local businesses; hospitality and tourism have been taught at TAFE or its predecessors in Hobart since 1961.
Situated on Collins Street in Hobart, TasTAFE School of the Visitor Economy was until 2025 known as Drysdale. Drysdale was part of the original TAFE Tasmania and was established by the Hobart Technical College (1888-1994) to offer hospitality and tourism training in 1961 and became an autonomous college within TAFE in 1976.
Drysdale, which had campuses in Hobart, Devonport and Launceston, was named for Arthur Drysdale (1887-1971), a butcher and entrepreneur turned publican and hotelier. Featuring commercial kitchens, a bakery, butchery, barista training rooms, hotel housekeeping training rooms, a training restaurant and licensed bar, the Hobart campus' location speaks to Collins Street's history and is housed in the former McLaren Hotel.
Yet despite 138 years of comprehensive public vocational education in Tasmania, TasTAFE is at a crossroads: facing cuts and closures from the Tasmanian government, despite increasing enrolments and community need for quality vocational education locally.
Community foundations
Jess Munday, secretary at Unions Tasmania, says TAFE qualifications underpin access to local well-paid jobs, which in turn supports small and local businesses.
"Less wages in Tasmanians' pockets means less payroll tax, which means less economic power and greater mainland wage gap," she says.
The mainland wage gap is the difference in wages paid in Tasmania for the same job than in mainland Australian cities and towns.
"TAFE is a community builder and a pathway for people that are not necessarily wanting to study for a university degree."
Jess Munday, secretary, Unions Tasmania
"I have heard from members across the state where courses are no longer offered, where things have been scaled back, and that it is a really sad thing for the region, particularly in the North and Northwest."
Munday, who completed her Certificate in Work Health and Safety at TAFE, says the value TAFE brings to the community, to students and to the community cannot be underestimated.
"I think the cuts have been part of an ongoing government plan that has really undermined TAFE to the public as well," says Munday. "I suspect they are listening to business voices who would prefer to make money out of private training than invest in public TAFE."
She says this has a huge flow on effect, not only for student access in terms of cost and in regions who are not typically serviced by private providers, but for entire vocations that keep the Tasmanian economy afloat and for which local industry relies on comprehensively educated TAFE graduates.
"We've got a big issue here with our population growth stalling and working age people and young people leaving the state. We've lost creative arts completely already and other courses like tourism and guiding, there isn't the same degree of private infrastructure for the training," she says. "It will mean that our tourism sector continues to struggle with workforce pressures because we're not going to have people looking at those careers if they're not able to undertake training locally."
Tour guides are in shortage around Australia and the Cert III in Guiding is included in Fee Free TAFE.
"It's already a tough industry in many cases because of the seasonal nature of the work. I think Tasmanians are very proud, it's a beautiful place and people want to come here for those reasons, but a good, stable workforce underpins all of that," says Munday.
Uniquely Tasmanian
TasTAFE School of the Visitor Economy lecturer Susan Leake says the local industry is tightknit for good reason.
"The tourism industry is critical to the Tasmanian economy, one in six jobs, and on somewhere like the East Coast or a regional area, that becomes one in three," says Leake, who is also a judge for the prestigious Australian Tourism Awards.
"Tasmanian tourism is quite unique, we have a very unique, beautiful island, and our tourism business, our visitor economy, reflects that. The reasons people come to Tasmania and the way our tourism industry operates is very different. For a start, we're highly interconnected. Our businesses can't afford to be up against each other, they have to work together, even if they're in the same business."
The student cohort reflects the local community.
"We get a full gamut of students. The Cert III in Tourism, Cert III in Hospitality, or Cert III in Guiding don't have prerequisites so our courses also tend to get a lot of mature age students, and I love that, because a bunch of school leavers straight out of Year 12 sitting next to a couple of mature age students who've done nursing, or have worked in banking, or have been an ambulance officer are sitting side by side, and they bring such different approaches, and that exchange transfer between student colleagues is amazing," she says.
She says the aim of the School of the Visitor Economy is to back industry by developing a skilled and diverse tourism and hospitality workforce.
"We've designed our course to expose students to a variety of tourism experiences, and as part of that we partner with industry. We do field trips and excursions and that's our classroom. Putting my students on a bus, taking them on the Tourism Tasmania drive journeys to the Western Wilds, to the Southern Edge, to our Heartlands, that's really important," says Leake. "You need to understand why people come here, that's a major part of our training because once you know why they're coming here, you're then so well placed to provide them with that experience."
"Our way of supporting this driver of economy in Tasmania is to work hand in hand with industry to try and professionalise this role and not see tourism and hospitality as something you do in between something else. These are real careers."
The connection to industry also relates to Leake's own experiences in tourism.
Stops along the way
Leake has been teaching at TAFE for 13 years. Prior to that she trained as an early childhood teacher before landing a job and 30-year career at Qantas.
"When I finished my degree, I decided I wasn't quite ready to go and teach little ones, so I took a year off, and I went overseas, and got the travel bug," she says.
When she returned, travel called louder than the classroom and she applied for a job with Qantas.
"I've always been a teacher and a trainer, so even when I worked at Qantas, I worked teaching around the world involving inbound and outbound tourism," she says. "I then went into corporate and retail travel and ended up working with a couple of tourism organisations."
She first heard about Drysdale because her brother had done his chef training there.
"I knew of Drysdale House and it had an amazing reputation. My brother did his chef training here, and I used to work in all his restaurants when I was young," she laughs. "Interestingly, two of my colleagues at Qantas also had come through here and done the three-year diploma program in tourism hospitality. I distinctly remember talking to them about their training pathway, and what they'd learned."
This led to her direct connection to TAFE when she began sessional teaching in ticketing while still working at Qantas.
"I really loved it and they kept asking me to come back and do different units, so while I was balancing kids and career, I used to work part time and do sessional teaching as well," she says. "Once I started and saw the whole plethora of different areas that TAFE offered, I became one of TAFE's biggest advocates."
She also realised that teaching at TAFE was what she wanted to do fulltime: "I bit the bullet and left my day job and started [at Drysdale] as a contract employee. I basically just put my hand up for anything and everything that was in my purview. I started working in the advanced diploma program, and then gradually took over the running of the Cert III Travel and then the Cert III Tourism program."
She backed up her decades of industry experience with further teaching education while she was working fulltime.
"I did do my TAE, mainly because I trained in early childhood a long time ago… [and] after that I went on and completed my Bachelor of Adult and Applied Learning and then on top of that I did a Masters of Teaching, because I felt I owed it to my students and I'm really passionate about teaching," she says.
TAFE = hope
Leake sees TAFE as a conduit to build people.
"So many students who come to TAFE have often been failed by our education system, and they have a real, almost phobia about education. I think TAFE has a real role in righting that for many students, and showing them that they do have worth, are something, and are capable of learning," she says.
"To me, education's a lifelong learning journey, and whatever works for you at a particular time. And I'm living, breathing proof of that."
Susan Leake, TasTAFE School of the Visitor Economy lecturer
She says the advantages in vocational education is that there are many different ways for students to show what they know and what they can do, and success doesn't always mean completion.
"We teach qualifications, and we teach skill sets, and we teach units, and a qualification means you need to complete all those units satisfactorily to gain that qualification. But there's a whole other side to VET education that's not about gaining qualifications, that's about building resilience, building capability and building confidence," says Leake.
"In an assessment if you don't get it right, then I'm going to give you some practical feedback, and then we'll give it another go. I see the growing confidence of a student who comes into our classroom, and however we can find it, we want to make them feel their worth."
She also highlights that for students who want to go on to university, students who graduate from the TasTAFE advanced diploma in Tourism have a pathway through to the University of Tasmania.
"Fee Free TAFE and public education is pivotal because many students who might have thought about an academic career may not be able to afford that," she says, adding that TAFE allows them that opportunity.
Considered delivery
Benefiting students, the course continues to evolve to accommodate student flexibility.
"We went from a four-day delivery to a three-day delivery over a longer period, that also meant our students were coming out when industry was more ready to employ them," she says. "Our industry is about people, face-to-face delivery is actually really important and for many students they say that too, but we need to provide them with alternatives so they can balance their life with work and their training."
Leake says there's also a flex program that allows students to weave their way through on-campus workshops, on the job learning and online components as an alternative to allow them even more flexibility.
"For us as teachers, that's exciting, because traditional kind of classroom delivery has had its day," she says, adding that both students and industry benefit from these programs.
Industry connection is essential to the course delivery and exposes students to potential employers while they learn. One example is in the Cert III Guiding Bushwalking course.
"It is beautifully tailored to the Tasmanian experience. Our two teachers in there have vast experience within the industry and they work very closely with the organisations that are going to be employing those students," she says.
"Many of our students who come into the guiding course, are avid bushwalkers, they love the environment, they're very capable and knowledgeable, but if you're paying several thousand dollars to do an overland track or the Three Capes Track walk, these environments can be dangerous, so, for visitors to Tasmania, and for the businesses that provide those bushwalking and natural experiences having a guide that knows bush first aid, who understands food safety when you're cooking on a Trangia, who has been well versed in flora, fauna and geology, so they can speak with authority and knowledge and understand the climate and terrain, is really, really important, and what the guiding course does."
Leake says that while there's no requirement to have a qualification in the industry, the relationship between qualification and professionalisation is recognised by Tasmanian tour operators and tourists alike.
She says the course covers more than just bushwalking, going deeper into the responsibilities and knowledge-base behind a trek: from workplace health and safety, to privacy legislation for students to understand how to run social media in a business, sustainability, flora, fauna, customer service, hospitality, emergency protocols and the nuances of Tasmania's First Nations Peoples and how guides need to be considered around stories and interpretations.
"The Guiding course leaders Bruce Morley and Alex Hale have exceptional relationships with the First Nations communities and the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and that means that our guides are coming out with a very nuanced understanding of how that messaging needs to be conveyed to our customers and our clients," says Leake. "Professionalisation of this industry is incredibly important, qualification is important and we're teaching [students] confidence, knowledge and skills."
A future made with TAFE
TAFE Cert III In Guiding graduate Phoebe Roberts has spent the past two years guiding in Tasmania, and although she avoided the career at first, guiding, and TAFE education was in her blood.
"My dad did guiding for most of his life and he also did the TAFE course with Bruce and Alex," she says.
Rather than follow in her father's footsteps from the get-go, she tried to forge a path in a different industry first.
"I spent eight years doing real estate and was very much over being in an office," she says. "I'd always loved hiking, so I went and had a chat with Bruce and decided that guiding was the course for me."
She says guiding is a lot of fun, but it's a lot of work.
"The two different styles of tour guiding are very different in terms of what you're doing. The expedition style multi-day tours, I much prefer as it's the style of hiking I like. You're cooking for people, entertaining everyone, guiding them on the area that you're walking in and I particularly love interpreting all the plants that we see and teaching people how to become a hiker," she says.
She says although she had experience guiding with her dad and knew the basics, what she learnt during her Cert III broadened her skillset, deepened her knowledge and taught her responses and safety protocols for situations she hadn't yet found herself in.
"I had an absolute ball doing the course," she says, highlighting the field trips that backed the classroom learning. "Everyone's different in how they learn, but I find hands-on is the best way."
For her, on campus learning was just as important: "There's a huge amount that they're teaching and I have made some great friends from the course; it's created those lasting friendships. The library there too was excellent."
She says having people with the wealth of experience and passion that TasTAFE guiding teachers Bruce Morley and Alex Hale share their knowledge and teaching the right way to do things in the local environment is invaluable.
"The Tassie weather and environment is so unique, it's so important to learn properly from locals."
Phoebe Roberts, TAFE Cert III in Guiding graduate
"I think it would be absolutely devastating for that course to be removed given that bushwalking guiding is such a huge part of Tasmania and people come from the mainland to come to do this course," she says.
"As a Tasmanian resident, it was excellent to be able to have that as an accessible course for Tasmanians that want to get into the industry," she says. "I really love the fact that I've got a qualification behind myself that shows that I'm qualified in that industry instead of just saying I've got experience hiking. That was huge for me."
Raising standards
What she has learnt has built not only her confidence but her quality as a guide.
"The standards I find that I set for myself, but also the guides that have done the course are very different to the standards for the guides that haven't," she says. "You learn about safety and how to convey that to people and your style of interpreting things to people is very different to those that haven't done the course.
"It facilitated me being able to give a really great experience to guests as a whole."
On the job, Roberts looks for what she calls "special little moments" to point out to people she is guiding and is thrilled when they start noticing them for themselves across expeditions.
"Guests are coming from really busy lives and seeing people grow throughout a trip and become more comfortable in their surroundings is rewarding, but also just watching them pick up on the special little moments, like the light hitting the moss on a myrtle tree and seeing people get so relaxed in their surroundings and forget their busy lives. That to me, I've won. I've done a good job," she says.
