Learning needs of the tourism industry

Abstract

Tourism is one of the industries with fastest growing importance in nowadays globalised world and tourist professionals are facing different challenges on daily basis. The acquisition of skills in higher education has become a growing concern in a worldwide context of the need to enhance students’ employability. Great efforts are being made to close the gap between industry expectations and what academic studies offer. The purpose of this research is to investigate if tourism students at University Juraj Dobrila in Pula feel that their university experience enhances skills, which the tourism industry values as important, and whether there are differences in this respect between full-time and part-time students. We conducted a longitudinal study starting with the first year students and repeated with the same sample of students during their third year of study. The results of the study indicate that students perceive that the teaching strategies and curricula seem to be appropriate to help them to acquire the skills and competences that the industry needs. Furthermore, the findings show that there are significant differences in acquisition of the skills between full-time and part-time students. This calls for university training to reinforce the skills (attitudes, aptitudes, behaviour) that students will need in their future careers.

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