The Competencies of Tourism and Hospitality Students in Selected Higher Education Institutions as Assessed by Industry Practitioners

Abstract

Adequate competencies have always been screened to fill in various positions in the industry. This study, thus, specifically addressed every industry practitioner’s competency assessment of tourism and hospitality students in selected higher education institutions. With the K-12 transition in the Philippine educational setting, ASEAN integration, and with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the researcher intends to identify the competencies highlighted directly by industry practitioners. These sets of skills are beneficial to any student’s development program since selected schools are in constant review of their respective curricula and syllabi. The descriptive study used the hospitality, tourism, and events industry model framework with 363 industry practitioner-respondents from 93 hospitality related industries. From the data gathered, the study revealed that the private school has a higher level of competency in terms of foundational competencies and industry-specific competencies compared with students in public school. Students in selected higher education institutions possess high-level skills in Foundational Competencies and Industry-Specific Competencies. The study also showed that there is a significant difference in terms of foundational competencies while there is no significant difference in terms of Industry-Specific Competencies. It can be concluded that, regardless of the differences in the skills, among the students from the selected higher institutions, the level of competency remains high. Results of the study likewise produced a compilation of the respondents’ recommendations for the proposed student development program.