A study of work-integrated learning experience of hospitality and tourism management students in Guangdong under the COVID-19 pandemic

H & T work-integrated learning

With the nature of high susceptibility to extreme events (Khan et al., 2021; Shah et al., 2021; Zhong et al., 2021), the labor market of H & T industry is heavily affected by COVID-19, causing a mass withdrawal of low-skilled and entry-level workers and the rise of technology adoption (Huang et al., 2021). Cooperation among different stakeholders, especially the industry practitioners and the education institutes, is vital to the alleviation of talent outflow and unemployment issues.

To make H & T students industry-ready, an experiential learning program, WIL, has been established in higher education institutions (Nyanjom et al., 2020). It offers students an opportunity to build up their capability and employability skills by merging and applying knowledge and theories that they have learned from traditional classes to real-world situations, including internships, fieldwork placements, simulations, and collaborative projects operated through industry and community connections. With support from the industry, a wide range of practical work experience and job positions has been provided. Students can absorb, learn, and apply various skills and knowledge in both breadth and depth from the allocated jobs or those that they have sourced from the market. Thus, it provides students with a valuable understanding of the industry, offers a market advantage in competitive work (Bilsland et al., 2020), and offers students a long-term career aspiration (Robinson et al., 2016). Therefore, WIL enhances students’ confidence level and capability by equipping them with the required skills.

Multiple skills improved from application

When designing H & T program learning outcomes, it is of utmost importance that multiple skills and relevant theories are embedded so that students are able to put theory into practice during WIL/internships. According to Kaushal and Srivastava (2021), developing multiple skills for H & T workers is an effective way to help reduce layoffs and retain employees. Equipping employees with multiple skills not only enhances business performance but also fosters positive job commitment and attitudes.

As a service-oriented industry, customer-staff interaction is essential for high-quality services given to H & T guests. Staff performance and their interaction with guests can heavily affect the customers’ feedback (Losekoot et al., 2018). Communication is also important in the development of colleague relationships which is conducive to positive workplace atmosphere, staff motivation, and staff morale. This becomes more important given the challenging work environment and market demands during COVID-19.

Meanwhile, language skills and service skills can also be developed and improved during H & T’s WIL. Apart from English or any other local and international languages that have been acquired in the higher education institutions, WIL also provides students with exposure to professional language in the workplace, enhancing their professionalism and allowing them to communicate well with local and international guests (Sonnenschein et al., 2019). Proper use of professional language can portray a positive image of a renowned H & T business. Consequently, this is considered to be crucial to business recovery and image re-building due to COVID-19.

In the context of COVID-19, H & T customers’ needs and behavioral trends are ever-changing. The ability to identify the problems that guests are facing and to create a corresponding action plan to resolve them are vital. In general, problem-solving skills can be developed via placements. WIL can provide such experience and problem-based learning opportunities when confronting customer service problems and crisis management skills (Sonnenschein et al., 2019). Thus, it helps students develop creative solutions to problems (Losekoot et al., 2018).

Teamwork is also an essential component of soft skills that H & T students are required to learn. It facilitates the efficiency and effectiveness of peer collaboration and the distribution of the tasks in the industry. Losekoot et al. (2018) revealed that internships increase students' awareness of the importance of teamwork. Upon completion of practical work experience, students will realize that mutual understanding and mutual assistance between co-workers are vital.

In summary, although the knowledge, theories, and skills have been embedded in H & T programs and classes at higher education institutions, WIL is expected to provide dynamic contexts for application. It is worth noting that the meaning and scope of multiple skills required and expected in today’s H & T industry have also been constantly changing and updating due to COVID-19. These changes and updates have been considered and incorporated in relevant H & T programs as well (Sigala, 2021). Therefore, the following hypothesis was proposed:

Desired career prospect

Kusluvan and Kusluvan (2000) defined career prospect as one of the attributes that influences the perception of future opportunities and the hope for revenue that one can receive in the industry. In the H & T industry, the desired career prospect is dependent upon one’s perceptions of the job which are influenced by the nature of work, social status, and work values. These are the main factors shaping staff’s attitude and perception of the industry (Wan et al., 2014). Profoundly, improving the employees’ skills is conducive to having a skilled and qualified workforce, and this meanwhile enhances their perception of career prospect (Govender and Wait, 2017). With the development and improvement of employability skills, the experienced, skilled, and qualified staff are capable of adapting to different workplaces, forming good relationships with customers, fellow colleagues, and managers (Nguyen et al., 2021). It also equips staff with the ability to work in high-skilled jobs which can bring promotion opportunities, pay rises, and social status enhancement. Consequently, skill improvement can prepare employees for competitive advantage enhancements in the labor market and as the foundation of establishing a positive perception of career prospect. Particularly, it positively affects workers’ confidence, perceived capability, and commitment to work in the industry and further facilitates effective business operation and performance (Wan et al., 2014). The following hypothesis was thus proposed.

Positive (H & T) industry image change due to COVID-19

Previous literature has overwhelmingly discussed COVID-19’s negative impacts on the H & T industry. They implied that the industry is sensitive and fragile, and its vulnerability is reflected in its susceptibility to various crises (Zhong et al., 2021). Different crises will influence the industry development, business performance, and destination economies among others. Throughout history, various influential crises have included infectious diseases (e.g., severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)), natural disasters (e.g., earthquake or tsunami), economic crises (e.g., the financial crises of 2007 and 2008), terrorists (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan.), and social incidents (e.g., anti-government movement) (Yang et al., 2011; Rossello et al., 2017; Tse et al., 2018). Today, COVID-19 has severely affected the global economy and H & T industry (Gossling et al., 2020). The industry has almost come to a standstill, thereby affecting both the supply and demand sides of the industry for a prolonged period of time.

Other than the negative influences, COVID-19 has positive implications to trigger industry changes and updates. For example, more technology and innovations are expected for future industry development. Hotels may consider adopting delivery robots, luggage-carrying robots, robot butlers, all-robotic staff, mobile apps, digital keys, and so on (Rai, 2017; Zhang, 2020). Meanwhile, an increasing demand exists for using augmented reality (AR) applications (Shin and Jeong, 2021) and virtual reality (VR) technologies (Yung et al., 2021) in marketing practices and product development. Some of these technological adaptations and innovations may substitute part of human labor forces and may demand higher-level multiple skills of manpower for the remaining duties (Shah et al., 2021). H & T organizations will offer more tailor-made training for future employees to acquire richer knowledge and higher technology literacy (Huang et al., 2021; Sigala, 2021).

Furthermore, crisis management and risk prevention are other popular themes of future development (Zhong et al., 2021). Given that many existing tourists and industry consumers may still be unwilling to travel or dine out due to the fear of COVID-19 and the perceived risk of infection (Zhong et al., 2021), the other counterparts still retain high demand for relevant services offered in the industry. For example, hygiene and cleanliness applications may become increasingly important for future service, marketing, and management endeavors (Jiang and Wen, 2020; Majeed and Ramkissoon, 2020). Stringent health and safety measures should be incorporated into an updated crisis management plan for the efforts of prevention and preparedness.

The H & T industry has entered a transformational stage (Abbas et al., 2021). The future industry should arguably develop and strengthen its sustainability policies and practices and fully utilize this chance to reshape its sustainable and socially responsible image (Orindaru et al., 2021). Tsai (2021) explicitly highlighted that for many businesses and governments, using resources more effectively without increasing waste is an important sustainable development goal. Local and regional destinations, natural areas and parks, and short-haul travel with lower environmental impacts are expected to be important in tourism resilience and recovery (OECD, 2020). In addition, hotels and accommodations will strategically develop further in redesigning their products to attract environment-conscious guests and future new demands. Reduced touching has been recognized to possibly translate into “less exposure to contaminations” (Killion, 2021). Similar sustainable innovations can also be expected to be used in the food and beverage sector (Koster, 2021).

Although previous studies have also attempted to pay extra attention to the positive COVID-19 impacts that trigger industry developments and updates, whether H & T students as future industry employees, have acknowledged the positive influence and generated a positive industry image change because of their WIL or internship are issues that still await further research. Furthermore, whether this positive industry image influences students’ desired career prospect needs to be investigated. Our study filled the research gap with the following two hypotheses:

Conceptual framework

Finally, the conceptual framework was proposed (Figure 1). The application was hypothesized to pave the way for multiple-skill improvement because of WIL. With various skills improved, students were hypothesized to form desired career prospect as well as generate positive industry image changes due to COVID-19. Positive industry image change was also assumed to influence desired career prospect.

Measures

All measures were adopted from the literature. For example, the perceived “application” (two items) and “skill improvement” (six items) scales were adapted from Xu et al. (2022). They represent two important aspects of WIL experience in H & T industry. The attitude of “positive industry image change” (six items) was developed from different previous studies that have been made to understand COVID-19 and its impact on H & T industry. These studies included those of Kaushal and Srivastava (2021); Shah et al. (2021); Sigala (2020) and Wen et al. (2019). Finally, the predicting outcome is students’ “desired career prospect” (ten items) in the industry, and its scale was derived from Wan et al. (2014). All major measures employed a seven-point Likert scale (from “1” to “7” indicating “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”). Their other profile information was also collected. English was back-translated into Chinese, with advice and input from three scholars and two hospitality/tourism-related industry experts. Slight changes were further made after pilot tests involving 10 H & T degree students. The questions were uploaded to a well-known online survey platform in China: ebdan.net.

Survey procedure

Six renowned colleges/universities in Guangdong Province, China with H & T-related majors were contacted and four agreed to support and assist the project. Another four colleges/universities in other provinces/cities (i.e., Beijing, Shanghai, and Sichuan provinces) in China were also contacted but declined our invitation. The target population of this study was undergraduate students specializing in H & T management in China during the period of study. Purposive sampling (Teeroovengadum and Nunkoo, 2018) was adopted to satisfy the research purpose in this study. With the consent of program leaders and lecturers, the online version of survey questionnaires was created and distributed to their students who majored in hotel/hospitality, tourism, or event (conference, exhibition, etc.). The e-link of the survey was sent to different classes through the WeChat system, mainly a Chinese multi-purpose messaging and social media application. The students were informed about the background of this survey, their participation would be voluntary in nature, and their responses were treated with strict confidentiality. Thus, the survey was for research purposes only and students were free to withdraw from participation at any time.

A screening question on whether the survey respondent has completed either fully or partially an internship or work-integrated education/learning during university/college studies was asked. Those who answered “no” to this question (i.e., those who did not start their internship or did not need to fulfill internship requirements) were screened out. The remaining qualified respondents were requested to read the instructions of the questionnaire (including research objectives, how confidentiality is ensured, voluntary nature of participation and right to withdraw, the time commitment for the survey, the affiliation of the research project, etc.) and provide informed consent. They were then asked to answer which specific industry sector s/he has been working for in internship or work-integrated education/learning (e.g., hotel/accommodation, restaurant/catering, attraction/theme park, event). Based on their recall, they were asked to reflect on their learning experience, such as their obtained and improved multiple skills, their perception of the industry image change, and desired career prospect.

Data analysis

Various statistical techniques were applied to test the research objectives and hypotheses. SPSS 27 was used to explore the demographic characteristics of respondents. SmartPLS software 3.0 was adopted to analyze data using partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM). Given the fact that data collection is becoming more challenging today which may result in a lower response rate, smaller sample size was assumed at the end for which PLS-SEM was considered appropriate owing to its less stringent assumptions on sample size and normality (Hair et al., 2016). In our study, we followed a widely adopted sample size rule, i.e., “10-times rule” (Kock and Hadaya, 2018) that the sample size determined should be greater than at least 10 times of the model links connecting to any latent variable in the research model. In our research model, the greatest number of links for a given latent variable (e.g., “desired career prospect”) was expected to be 10, thus determining a minimum sample size of 100.

Owing to the reflective research model proposed, a consistent bootstrapping method was adopted to examine both measurement and structural models (Hair et al., 2016). Composite reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity were also tested. We followed a stringent threshold of outer model loading requirement (Henseler et al., 2009); thus, any items with loading lower than 0.7 were dropped. Composite reliability should meet the requirement of 0.7 to be considered as satisfactory (Hair et al., 2016). The average variances extracted (AVE) of different constructs were reported, and those greater than 0.5 were considered satisfactory to reach the convergent validity (Hair et al., 2016). Concerning the discriminant validity, the HTMT (Heterotrait-monotrait) method (Henseler et al., 2009) was adopted, and the threshold ratio was 0.85 (Kline, 2011) to satisfy the discriminant validity requirement.

Sample

Approximately 335 H & T degree/sub-degree students were approached based on the feedback from the program leaders or lecturers who helped distribute the survey, and 64 students turned out to be unqualified as they failed to pass the screening question of completing an internship or WIL program either completely or partially. The final sample size was 168 (Table 1) with a valid response rate of 50.1 percent. It also exceeded the expected minimum sample size of 100. Out of the 168 valid samples, 78.6 percent were female, which was considered representative of the H & T college student population (Tavitiyaman et al., 2021). A total of 60.7 percent of the respondents majored in hotel/hospitality areas, followed by those who majored in tourism (25.6 percent) or event management (13.7 percent). They previously engaged in internships in a variety of sectors, including hotel/accommodation (36.3 percent), restaurant/catering (33.3 percent), event (14.3 percent), attraction/theme park (9.5 percent), travel agency (1.2 percent), and others (5.4 percent).

Measurement model

Measurement model testing was conducted with 1,000 sample bootstrapping (Table 2). Three items (“It is easy for me to find jobs directly within the H & T field”, “Finding a good H & T job for me requires many social networks and relationships”, “I can make more money in the H & T industry than in other sectors”) with low loadings were eliminated. The other remaining items were confirmed with factor loadings higher than 0.7. The composite reliability statistics ranged from 0.928 to 0.955. The AVE figures were between 0.656 and 0.865. Thus, reliability and convergent validity for each construct turned out to be highly satisfactory as recommended by Fornell and Larcker (1981). According to Table 3, the HTMT ratios for each pair of constructs were below 0.85. Thus, discriminant validity was also not a problem in our study.

Structural model and hypothesis testing

The final step is structural model testing (Figure 2). The SRMR statistic (SRMR = 0.079) indicated satisfactory model fit. Predictive power was assessed by referring to R square values for each dependent variable. The recommended threshold was considered as 0.2 in consumer behavior research (Hair et al., 2016). In our study, the predictive power for both “positive industry image change” and “skill improvement” turned to be the highest (R square = 0.521), followed by “desired career prospect” (R square = 0.428). It eventually suggests that 42.8 percent of the variance for the final predicting outcome (i.e., desired career prospect) could be explained in our structural model.

Subsequently, the following hypothesis testing (Table 4) was undertaken. The effect of “application” on “skill improvement” was significant (β = 0.721; t value = 12.900; p < 0.001), thus supporting H1. The relationship between “skill improvement” and “desired career prospect” was also significant (β = 0.662; t value = 7.225; p < 0.001), thus supporting H2. Moreover, the “skill improvement” was also found to exert a significant effect on “positive industry image change” (β = 0.722; t value = 11.338; p < 0.001), thus supporting H3. However, the positive relationship between “positive industry image change” and “desired career prospect” was not found (β = −0.011; t value = 0.112; p > 0.05), thus rejecting H4. A further round of f square tests was made to further supplement the path analysis. The significance values for all tests were less than 0.05 except that of the relationship concerning H4.