Listening, Understanding and Responding to Leisure and Tourism Undergraduates

Abstract

This paper explores the experiences of first year leisure and tourism undergraduates. Engagement with the literature on the factors influencing students’ success or failure is supported by qualitative evidence from a case study of one Higher Education Institution in England. The study made use of focus groups and one-to-one semi-structured interviews to elucidate the factors influencing the success or failure of students. A key finding of the study was that students’ peer group networks are vitally important, so much so that many students seek help from their friends much more readily than from academic tutors.