Abstract
Keywords
1. Introduction
2. Literature review
3. Methodology
4. Results
5. Conclusions and implications
Author statement
Acknowledgement
References
Abstract
Hotel interns' satisfaction with the internship may play a significant role in determining their intention to develop a career in the hospitality industry. Factors that affect hotel interns' satisfaction and career intention are thus important to be identified in linking hospitality education to industry human resource needs. This study aims to identify the key factors that affect job satisfaction and career intention of hotel interns in China. Data were collected through a survey on hospitality management students in three Chinese universities. Factor analysis identified seven factors that influence students' satisfaction with internship experience and their career intention; these include internship achievements, mentorship and assessment, interpersonal relationships, compensation, hotel features, hotel internship programming, and curriculum requirements. Regression results indicated that internship achievements, curriculum requirements, hotel internship programming, and mentorship and assessment significantly influenced interns’ satisfaction with internship experience, while curriculum requirements, interpersonal relationships, and internship achievements significantly affected career intention. The study provides empirical insights to guide hotel internship program design and practices.
1. Introduction
Hospitality management emerges as a tertiary degree study program attracting a significant number of students in colleges and universities across the globe. Due to the practice-oriented nature of careers in the hospitality industry, hotel internship has become an important part of curriculum design in higher degree hospitality programs (Chen, Shen, & Gosling, 2018). Internships allow students to undergo comprehensive training, master applied knowledge, acquire analytical and problem-solving skills, and develop a practical process to apply knowledge into the workplace (Collins, 2002; Jiang & Tribe, 2009). In addition, internships also prepare students to enter the job market by cultivating students’ work attitude and professional cognition (Dickerson, 2009; Zopiatis, 2007), thus improving their employability.
Hospitality management is a degree program offered in many Chinese universities. With the boom of the hospitality industry in China, hospitality management has become a popular subject area of higher learning in colleges and universities. By the end of 2017, around one thousand Chinese higher learning institutes had established hospitality management as a degree program, and the number of enrollment majoring in hospitality had reached nearly 60,000 (CNTA, 2018). Over the years, hospitality management programs in China's universities have trained many hotel professionals for the industry, making a major contribution to the industry's development through providing the talent needed. Despite the booming growth of hospitality management programs and number of students enrolled in these programs in China, there has been a notable “disequilibrium of supply and demand” between the hospitality education sector and the industry (Wu, 2004, p. 22). While there are increasing numbers of students majoring in hospitality and tourism degrees in China, few of these graduates eventually commit their careers in the hospitality and tourism industry (Song & Wang, 2008). Hotel internship provides trial experiences of working in the hospitality industry and has become an integrative component of a higher degree hospitality management program in China. Therefore, it is important to seek solutions to manage these internship programs to better meet the industry talent needs.