The Role of Pleasure to Improve Tourism Education

This book discusses how pleasure, as an emotional motivation, can play a leading role in improving the learning of new cognitive skills and abilities. Set in a research center orientated to innovate educative techniques for optimizing the learning process, this case study is focusing on the power of pleasure (joy) as a strategy to better the standard education systems in Argentina and beyond. This editorial project is based on an efficient experiment known as “PANCOE” where pre-graduate students of tourism bachelor at the University of Palermo, Argentina, were subject to different pleasurable experiences mainly marked by eating, tasting dishes and non-alcohol drinks while cooking and kneading bread pieces. PANCOE aims to integrate students' senses with their emotions, academic performance, and digital platforms. PANCOE devotes efforts to transforming negative feelings like fear into positive ones like joy. As an outcome, students who had taken part in PANCOE not only obtained higher degrees but also completed their studies with a bachelor's degree. Therefore, PANCOE situates as a promising and exciting tourism education method to better the academic performance of low-grade students in tourism and to bring creativity to the tourism classroom for all students.