A Study on Hospitality Students Satisfaction towards their Internship: a Case from Hang Zhou, China

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1 A Study on Hospitality Students Satisfaction towards their Internship: a Case from Hang Zhou, China BAO Yafang, FANG Gongyong School of Tourism and Health Zhejiang Forestry University, P.R.China, [email protected] Abstract The present study uses a quantitative approach to investigate students satisfaction level toward their internship experience in the hospitality and tourism industry as well as identify the underlying factors of their overall satisfaction. A total of 124 usable questionnaires were collected for analysis. The result shows that students overall satisfaction was low, and internship factor of Job itself had the greatest influence on students overall satisfaction. Based on the findings of this study, recommendations were provided in order to improve the quality of internship programs. Key words: Internship; Tourism and hospitality; Job satisfaction; Hangzhou 1 Introduction Tourism education in China plays an important role of supporting tourism development and ensuring the continuous supply of quality human resources to meet the overwhelming industry requirements. In order to bridge the gap between students academic experience and the requirements of employers, schools that provide tourism and hospitality courses make great efforts to develop internship programs. Nowadays, hospitality internship has become an integral component of almost all hospitality programs in mainland China. As is well documented, there are many positive effects for all stakeholders by forming a triangular partnership between education providers, students and industry. Internship can be considered as a great opportunity for educators to increase the contact and cooperation with the hospitality industry which could enrich the industry s input in course development and assist educators to keep abreast of hospitality trends and future developments (Leslie, 1991). While Tobias (1996) and Barron (1999) agreed that students increasingly demand well-organized internship programs so that they can acquire professional skills, test career choice and gain a greater understanding of the industries requirements while at the same time, industry seeks effective ways to train student trainees in their organization and to reduce uncertainty in the hiring in later stages. Pavesic (1984) reported that Internship Work Experience was ranked first in importance by recent graduates, third in importance by industry practitioners. However, the tourism and hospitality industry in Mainland China has been confronted with the problem of attracting and retaining quality employees which has lead to a shortage of skilled personnel to staff the ever-growing number of tourism and hospitality business. Many Chinese tourism and hospitality management graduates are leaving the industry or even failing to enter the industry upon graduation. It was reported that only 10% to 20% of the tourism and hospitality graduates in comprehensive universities work in their professional industry. Furthermore, over 20% of them will leave to other industries only several years later (Xu, 2005). Fox (2001) argued that a bad internship experience can just as quickly turn a young person away from the industry. Waryszak (1999) also comments that an internship program that fails in meeting students expectations would discourage them to enter the tourism and hospitality industry after graduation. Unfortunately, internship programs are often considered as unstructured and poorly organized so that students generally complain about the quality (Jenkins, 2001). In order to attract as many graduated students as possible to start their career in the hospitality and tourism industry, both the educator and industry should collaborate closely to develop a well-organized quality internship program to meet students expectation. Although a number of studies in the literature emphasize student internship experiences, little updated empirical research has been done in Mainland Chinese context. Therefore, the significance of this study is that it attempts to explore students satisfaction level toward their internship experience in the hospitality and tourism industry as well as identify the underlying factors of students internship satisfaction. 1069

2 2 The Internship Programs in Mainland China As stated by Davis (1990), internship is a kind of experiential learning where students take the opportunity to apply learned theories from schools in the real world situation, and it provides an opportunity for students to integrate and consolidate thinking and action. Statler, the father of the American hotel, who emphasized the need for hospitality students to experience the demands of management in the real word via a hands-on learning experience (Cited from Zopiatis, 2007). Lam and Xiao (2000) stated that education institutes and vocational training schools of tourism in mainland China nurture graduates with operational concepts and knowledge without paying much attention to skill development. As a result, tourism graduates are handicapped by a lack of technical skills and workplace experience, and they likely to encounter reality shock when they join the industry after graduation which could make them leave the industry. They further asserted that one of the development constraints of tourism education in mainland China was the curricula did not emphasis internship. In order to meet the needs of the industry s requirements, education providers have made great efforts to develop internship programs. Nowadays, almost all hospitality programs in mainland China incorporate internship practices in their curricula, in one form or another. Internships in mainland China are now viewed as an opportunity to assist the local hospitality industry during the high volume season by providing qualified labor with low costs, while at the same time enhancing the students learning experiences and career opportunities. However, students generally complain about the quality of the internship programs in mainland China. For some tourism and hospitality schools, they don t arrange the internship placements for students; instead, students find jobs by themselves. What s more, on-site visits of school mentors as well as communication between students and school mentors during the internship are rare. Moreover, most internship representatives are academic staff members who are looking after not only the coordination and arrangements of internship program for their students, but also teaching and research. Workloads of these staff members can be very heavy which leads to a downgrade of effectiveness and efficiency of the coordination function of their internship programs. In addition, the job nature of internship positions in mainland China usually involves long working hours with high visibility, such as waiters, waitress, chambermaids, front desk personnel, etc. and internship positions are usually considered as set posts without any job rotations which may decrease the interest of hospitality students toward internship (Hou, 2004). Benefits for interns are rare while the employment conditions are poor, such as low rate, heavy workloads and no pay for overtime duties. Some employers even don t pay attention to the objectives of the internship, and they just treat interns as a supplement for a labor shortage instead of developing potential employees through internship. So students generally complain about the quality of the internships which result in increasingly high fallout rates of graduates from the tourism and hospitality industry (Lam &Ching, 2007). 3 Students Satisfaction Towards Internship Girard (1999) investigated interns perception of work, supervision and appraisal within various hospitality organizations internship programs. The study suggested that interns highly satisfied with work, and generally satisfied with supervision, appraisals are still an area of concern. Lam and Ching (2007) investigated the difference between expectations and perceptions of Hong Kong hospitality students towards their internship program, and they found that overall students expectations toward internship were unmet. Ju et al.(1999) also found that Korean students rated relatively low in the satisfaction level regarding hotel internship experience. On the contrary, study by Busby et al. (1997) stated that students were satisfied with their internship, especially in the areas of technical skills and knowledge which improved during internship. Emenheiser et al. (1997) also found that a majority of respondents were satisfied with their internship which strengthened their problem-solving ability in the hospitality industry. While Taylor (1988) suggested that poor supervision was the most likely condition 1070

3 to lead to dissatisfaction with internships. Nelson (1994) stated that repetitious work with little freedom to apply and test knowledge along with the high risk that accompanies inadequate or untimely feedback would relate to dissatisfaction with supervision. He further indicated that hospitality interns report greater satisfaction when they have a supportive relationship in the work setting. Fagenson (1989) also indicated that mentor relationships provide invaluable benefits for students. 4 Methodology 4.1 Instrument This study adopted a quantitative research design. A structured questionnaire was developed based on an extensive review of literature. The questionnaire consisted of three sections. The first section evaluated respondents satisfaction towards their internship experience. There were 24 internship variables measuring scale. Respondents were requested to give a score to each of the 24 variables using a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging extremely dissatisfied (1) to extremely satisfied (5). The second section measured respondents overall satisfaction towards their internship. A 5-point Likert-type scale was also employed in this section ranging from extremely dissatisfied (1) to extremely satisfied (5). The third section collected socio- demographic data of respondents such as gender, grade, the name of the school etc. 4.2 Samples The sampling frame of this study consists of three tourism and hospitality schools in Hangzhou in which students are required to undertake a certain period of internship. The questionnaires were completed within 1 month from the completion of their internship. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to students. Altogether 200 questionnaires were distributed and 131 were collected, representing a response rate of 65.5%. A number of 7 were discarded because of incomplete information. Thus, a number of 124 usable questionnaires were obtained. Then the data were coded, computed, and analyzed using SPSS for windows. Statistical analysis such as frequencies, factor analysis, and multiple regression analysis were used according to the respective objectives. Frequencies were used to display the distributions of respondents demographic profiles. Factor analysis with VARIMAX rotation was conducted to create variable composites from the original 24 attributes and identify a smaller set of factors that explained most of the variances between the variables, and apply the derived factor scores in subsequent regression analysis. In this study, factors were retained only if they had eigenvalues greater than or equal to 1.0 and factor loading greater than 0.4. Scale reliability analysis was also employed to measure the internal consistency of the satisfaction construct, and the generally agreed upon lower limit for the Cronbach s alpha was set at.70 (Hair et al., 1998). Finally, multiple regression analysis was performed using the standardized factor scores. Hempel (1977) asserted using regression analysis as a practical basis for assessing the relative contributions of various elements. Thus each of the independent variables was used to analyze their contribution to respondents overall internship satisfaction. 5 Results and Discussion Table 1 shows that among 124 respondents, the majority of respondents (75.8%) were female and only one-fourth were male (24.2). Such a finding is commensurate with the general phenomenon that almost all of the tourism and hospitality schools in Mainland China have more female students than male. Slightly more than two-third of respondents (68.5%) had an internship placement in the F&B department, followed by those in the Front Office department (20.2%) and Housekeeping department (10.5%). The majority of respondents were in five-star hotels (46%) and four-star hotels (49.2%). More than one-third of respondents (38.7%) had previous internship experience in a hotel. About half of respondents were from tourism and hospitality school A (53.2%), and nearly one-third from School B (30.6%) while the remaining from school C (16.1%). The majority of respondents had taken 3 to 6 months internship (87.9%), and the remaining (12.1%) had taken less than 3-month internship. None of 1071

4 respondents did more than a 6-month internship. Table 1 Profile of the respondents (n=124) Variable Frequency Percentage Gender Female Male Department Front office Housekeeping Sales & marketing F&B Human resource Others Star rating Three-star hotel Four- star hotel Five-star hotel Pervious internship experience Yes No Institutions School A School B School C Internship Duration >3months 3-6months More than 6 months % 24.2% 20.2% 10.5% 4.8% 68.5% 6.5% 7.2% 4.8% 49.2% 46% 38.7% 61.3% 53.2% 30.6% 16.1% 12.1% 87.9% 0% Table 2 Students ratings of satisfaction with internship experience (n=124) Variables Mean Std. Deviation Ranking 1. Coordination between schools and employers Management system Opportunities for self-development Training program Able to apply theory to work place Supervisory support Organizational culture Pay Welfare Reasonable boss Communication with supervisor Appreciation & praise from supervisor Fairly treatment by supervisor Peer relationship Communication with colleagues Team spirit in the group Nature of the job you perform Work environment Work pressure Able to develop technical skills Sense of achievement from the job Opportunity for work rotation Interesting and challenging work Autonomy involved in the work Table 2 presents respondents rating of satisfaction with their internship on a 5-point Liker scale. As 1072

5 shown in the table, the satisfaction mean score for individual variables ranged from 2.74 to 3.62, while the overall internship satisfaction was Respondents expressed their dissatisfaction with coordination between schools and employers (2.88), opportunities for self-development (2.85), pay (2.75), welfare (2.86), work pressure (2.93), opportunity for work rotation (2.74), interesting and challenging work (2.90), and autonomy involved in the work '(2.92). Variables including peer relationship (3.62), communication with colleagues (3.58) received a relatively high rating compared to other variables. Principle components factor analysis followed by VARIMAX rotation was employed to analyze the 24 internship variables based on the Eigenvalues of 1 or above, and factor loadings of 0.4 or greater. Specifically, items with higher loadings were considered as more important and as having a greater influence on factor naming (Hair et al., 1995). Results as shown in Table 3 suggested 5 factors with 21 variables were abstracted for interpretation of the scale. They explained 68% of the overall variance with Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy of.850, which was higher than the recommended index of.60, and the Barlett Test of Sphericity was (p=.000). The remaining three variables were excluded in the subsequent analysis as their results were not significant. Table 3 Factor analysis on internship variables (N=21) Variables Factor Loading Communality Eigen-value %of Cum. Reli. Var. var. coeff. Factor 1:Job itself 22. Opportunity for work rotation 17. Nature of the job you perform 23. Interesting and challenging work 18. Work environment 24. Autonomy involved in the work 21. Sense of achievement from the job 19. Work pressure 20. Able to develop technical skills 4. Cooperation between schools and employer Factor 2: Superior 12. Appreciation & praise from supervisor 11. Communication with supervisor 6. Supervisory support 10. Reasonable boss Factor 3: Training & development 7. Organizational culture 4. Training program 3. Opportunities for self-development 5. Able to apply theory to work place Factor 4: Pay & welfare 8. Pay 9. Welfare Factor 5: Peer relationship 14. Peer relationship 15. Communication with colleagues Factor loadings were used to assign a name to each factor. Factor 1 was composed of 9 items relating to job itself. Opportunity for work rotation, nature of the job you perform, interesting and challenging work and work environment were examples of higher factor loading for this factor. Factor 2 included 4 items relating to supervisor. Appreciation & praise from supervisor and communication with supervisor were examples of higher factor loadings for this factor. Factor 3 included 4 items relating to training and development. Organizational culture and training program were examples of higher factor loadings for this factor. Factor 4 was composed of 2 items relating to pay and welfare, while those two items are all with high factor loadings. Factor 5 included two items relating to peer relationship, and factor loading for those two items is.916 and.863 respectively. 1073

6 The reliability tests were also conducted in this study which indicated that the reliability coefficients of the five factors ranged from.786 to.895, greater than the recommended significant level of.70. Thus, a good internal consistency among the attributes within each factor was found. Mean values of the five factors were calculated in the table 4, which indicates that overall, students satisfaction level towards their internship was not high, especially in the factor 4, pay and welfare (2.81), followed by job itself (3.00). It indicates that student interns may think the rewards they gain wasn t commensurate to the efforts they put during the internship period. Whereas, the factor peer relationship has a mean value of 3.60, suggesting that students had a relatively good command of communicating with their colleagues, and they are relatively satisfied with the relationship with their peers. Table 4 Mean values for students satisfaction toward internship by the five factors (n=124) Factors Mean Std. Deviation Factor 1:Job itself Factor 2: Superior Factor 3: Training & development Factor 4: Pay & welfare Factor 5: Peer relationship Liner regression was conducted with the overall internship satisfaction as a dependent variable, and the five factors as independent variables (Table 5). Results show that only the factor job itself ( Opportunity for work rotation, Nature of the job you perform, Interesting and challenging work, Work environment, Autonomy involved in the work, Sense of achievement from the job, Work pressure, Able to develop technical skills, Cooperation between schools and employer ) was statistically correlated with overall internship satisfaction.. The coefficient of determination (R 2 ) of.331 indicated that 33.1% of the variance in the overall internship satisfaction was explained by the factor job itself. The positive regression coefficients (B) illustrate that the factor job itself positively affected students overall internship satisfaction. The finding of this study indicated that students would appreciate if they were given a certain degree of decision-making in the workplace instead of following strict operational policies and procedures. What s more, students would also be satisfied if they were given more challenging and interesting jobs with job rotation, horizontally as well as vertically in the same department. A good communication and cooperation between schools, students and employers could increase students satisfaction level as well. As stated by Wildes and Mount (1997) that the success of the internships in the hospitality program depends on the effective coordination and communication of the instructor (school mentor), on-site supervisor, and interns, a three-way agreement between the three parties needs to established to outline the assignments and expectations of the internship program, as the hospitality industry is a hand-on business and events do not always go according to plan, the framework must be flexible. Table 5 Regression analysis of internship factors on overall satisfaction (N=124) Internship Factor B Beta t Sig. F1: Job itself Constant Conclusions and Recommendations Overall, students satisfaction mean scores on their internship were low, which indicates that overall, students were dissatisfied with their internship experience, especially on the following items: coordination between schools and employers, opportunities for self-development, pay and welfare, work pressure, opportunity for work rotation, interesting and challenging work, and autonomy involved in the work '. Multiple regression analysis in this study revealed that Job itself factor was the most influencing factor in predicting students overall satisfaction towards internship, which indicates that it is important 1074

7 for schools suggest employers provide job rotation and autonomy for student trainees so that the latter will find the internship program interesting and challenging. As stated by Gabris and Mitchell (1989), the quality of an internship as an educational tool appears to be more contingent upon the type of work and type of supervision a student receives. Supervisors who permit their interns to participate within the decision-making process of the organization, and who work to develop interesting and challenging assignments for their interns, are more likely find their interns satisfied with the educational benefits of the experience. So the supervisor plays a crucial role in determining the educational value of an internship for the intern, more emphasis should be placed on educating and training supervisors on how they can work more effectively with interns. As for schools, they should work closely with intern supervisors. Meetings with managers or supervisors on a regular basis are necessary. All too often interns are placed and then forgotten until the termination of the internship. So more guidance is needed concerning the role of the supervisor. In addition, schools should take a leading role in developing an organized internship program which requires the involvement of both employers and students. Information about the needs and interests of students as well as employers should be incorporated into the planning process of internship programs. What s more, more attention from school mentors should be given to students during internships, and weekly communication with school mentors via Internet and on-site visits by school mentors are necessary. As a faculty member s academic burden might not allow the person to take on the added responsibility of supervising students internship, so a full-time specialist staff is quite necessary. Finally, there is a need to develop more comprehensive and valid evaluation procedures for internship programs. It is important to evaluate program effectiveness from the standpoint of former interns. Self-evaluation on a frequent basis should also be encouraged. References [1]Barron, P. (1999). The theory and practice of industrial placement: An analysis of hospitality students experiences. In Molloy, J., & Davies, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual National Research Conference, [2]Busby, G., Brunt, P., & Baber, S. (1997). Tourism sandwich placements: an appraisal. Tourism Management, 18 (2), [3]Davis, L. (1990). Experience-based Learning within the Curriculum. A Synthesis Study. CNAA, Sheffield. [4]Emenheiser, D.A., Clayton, H. R., & Tas, R. F. (1997). Students perceptions of the effectiveness of hospitality industry internship experience. Proceedings of the 1997 Annual CHRIE Conference, USA, [5]Fagenson, E. A. (1989). The mentor advantage: Perceived career /job experiences of protégés versus non-proteges. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 10, [6]Fox, T. (2001). A sense of place. Caterer and Hotelkeeper, 189. [7]Gabris, G. T., & Mitchell, K. (1989). Exploring the relationships between intern job performance, quality of education experience, and career placement. Public Administration Quarterly, 12(4), [8]Girard, T. C. (1999). Interns perceptions of internships: A look at work, supervision and appraisals. Journal of Cooperative Education, 34(3), [9]Hair, J.F., Anderson, R.E., Tatham, R.L., & Black, W.C. (1998). Multivariate Data Analysis. Macmillan, New York. [10]Hair, J.F., Anderson, R. E. Tatham, R.L., & Black, W.C. (1995). Multivariate data analysis with readings. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall. [11]Hempel, D.J. (1977). Consumer satisfaction with the home buying process: Conceptualization and measurement. In H. K. Hunt (Ed), Conceptualization and measurement of consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Proceedings of Conference Conducted by Marketing Science Institute with support of National Science Foundation, May 1997: MSI Report No

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