Perception of Graduate Tourism Employees and Tourism Employers on Relevance of Tourism Education Attributes to Effective Tourism Work Performance in Kenya

Abstract

Continued sustenance of tourism industry requires human capital with the right skills, knowledge and competency. Kenya has a number of tertiary tourism education institutions that graduates potential employees for the tourism industry annually. Despite this, there is a need to link the tourism education training to the needs of the tourism industry so as to meet the needs and expectations of the industry. Many studies have investigated on this topical area of interest but have not exploited on the perception of tourism graduate employees and the tourism employers with regard to the relevancy of tourism education attributes. This study aimed at identifying perception of graduate tourism employees and tourism employers on relevance of tourism education attributes to effective tourism work performance in Kenya. A cross sectional survey research design was employed to collect data from 385 tertiary tourism graduate employees and 385 tourism employers in Kenya using multi-stage sampling. Data was collected using self-administered questionnaires. An independent-sample t-test was conducted in SPSS to determine if there were significant mean difference in perceived relevance of 17 tourism education attributes to effective work performance between graduate tourism employees and tourism employers in the Kenya. The results indicate that all the 17 tourism education attributes were perceived to be relevant by the two groups. The results also, largely, indicate that relevancy perception of tourism education attributes was high among the tertiary tourism graduate employees than among tourism employers. ‘Teaching methodology’ for instance was perceived to be the most relevant tourism education attributes among the tertiary tourism graduate employees (M = 4.41, SD = .89) than tourism employers (M = 3.41, SD = 1.09), a statistically significant mean difference, M = 1.00, 95% CI [.86, 1.14], t(736.15) = 13.91, p < .01. The study provides insights to tertiary tourism education program developers and the training institutions on the relevancy of tourism education and considerations of industry practitioners in the design and evaluation of tourism curriculum