Employability of tourism graduates : a three-way partnership

Ph.D. (Employee Relations)Abstract: Tourism is one of the fastest-growing, labour-intensive, people-centred industries, and has immense potential. Graduate unemployment, the historical development of the tourism industry, human resource development, tourism education and graduate employability, as well as the nature of South Africa’s economic growth and related constraints within the tourism industry have been widely debated. Consequently, higher education institutions (HEIs) are under increasing pressure to equip graduates with the necessary knowledge, skills, and attributes that would make them employable and highly versatile in various tourism sectors. This objectives of this study were to establish tourism graduates’ perceptions and the tourism industry’s experience regarding graduates’ employability attributes, as well as to identify the perception of tourism graduates and the tourism industry of the important knowledge and skills required in this industry. In addition, the study aimed to establish how tourism graduates perceive their abilities in terms of knowledge and skills, and how the tourism industry evaluates tourism graduates’ actual abilities. Lastly, the objective was to understand the current practices and perspectives of various HEIs, the tourism industry, and tourism graduates regarding knowledge, skills, and employability attributes. The research adopted a sequential explanatory mixed-method approach, which entailed combining quantitative and qualitative methods (Ivankova et al., 2006). In Phase 1, questionnaires were administered to 561 respondents. In Phase 2, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 participants who were purposively selected from tourism graduates working in the tourism industry, tourism academics, and experts from the tourism industry. An interview guide was utilised to direct the interaction to investigate these stakeholders’ perspectives and practices. This study found that the tourism industry’s experience of graduates’ employability attributes differs from the perception of tourism graduates. The tourism industry and..