Stakeholders’ Perspectives on Internship Process in Tourism Higher Education

Abstract

Internship is considered as a period of real work placement in a department or each department of an establishment; anything from several weeks to a year or more, taken in one or multiple placements. Thus, internship is an important part of tourism education since it helps undergraduates to put their knowledge into practice and expands their experience. This study explores stakeholders’ perspectives – in terms of undergraduate students, academics and tourism industry- about the current internship process in relation to tourism higher education. A questionnaire distributed to the three groups of stakeholders has been distributed to collect views. The results indicated that there were generally considerable agreement among stakeholder groups, with some notable differences. Although tourism managers emphasized the importance of internship for tourism higher education, they did not consider students as important human resource – as stated by students- during their internship experience. On the other hand, academics mentioned that managers of tourism companies view students as a cheap employee that can do specific tasks during their internship. At the end of this paper, implications are drawn to improve internship program in tourism higher education.