Tourism students' career conceptions towards service industry profession: a case study from human resource perspective

The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes and perceptions of current undergraduate tourism and hospitality students towards careers in the industry. For this study, a sample of 132 undergraduate students from hospitality and tourism management programs in Northern Cyprus was surveyed. SPSS Version 21 was used to explore the data. Results shows that the career factor items students have concerns over include job security, pay and promotion, reasonable workload, and job-family balance offered within the industry. Surprisingly, the most alarming finding to come out of this study is that more than 40% of the tourism students are undecided and not willing to work in the industry, which means the industry lose more than one third of the qualified graduates. Implications for hospitality and tourism educators and industry employers are discussed.