Stakeholders’ Perspectives on Internship Process in Tourism Higher Education

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Tourism Studies Department, Higher Institute of Tourism, Hotels and Computer, Alexandria

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.

Keywords

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics