Oman's Tourism Industry: Student Career Perceptions and Attitudes

Abstract

The Sultanate of Oman has prioritised the tourism and hospitality sector as a means for development, economic diversification, and job creation for Omani nationals. However, the desired target for Omani nationals in the sector's labour force remains unmet, while higher education tourism and hospitality programmes recruit below maximum capacity. The empirical findings of a survey of eighty Omani students on a tourism and hospitality programme at the Oman Tourism College in Muscat were used to explore the sector's human resources challenge, and the students' career perceptions and attitudes. The study addressed their motives for studying tourism and hospitality, their expectations and opinions about working in the sector, and how they viewed this as a career choice. The policy implications and a research agenda emerging from the findings are relevant to the context of economic diversification of rentier economies, tourism development and labour nationalisation policies in the oil-dependent Arab Gulf region.

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