Start Date

7-1-2011 8:00 AM

End Date

7-1-2011 9:15 AM

Track

1. Track 1 – Formal Paper Presentation

Subject Area

Hospitality and Tourism Education

Faculty Member

Cihan Cobanoglu, Ph.D., CHTP cihan@cihan.org

Abstract

Hospitality schools aim to provide their graduates with the skills and tools that are necessary to succeed in a rapidly changing and developing industry environment (Swanger & Gursoy, 2010). Given that information technology (IT) applications have become an essential part of hotel operations, this paper investigates industry perspective on the IT skills of hospitality school graduates. 110 industry professionals have participated in the study.The findings of this study are useful to hospitality educators in making sure that the information technology skills needed by the industry from hospitality school graduates are covered in curriculum. A significant gap between the importance scores of different skills reported by industry professionals’ and their evaluation of recent graduates’ performance shows that there is a need to improve students’ IT skills. The results of the study indicate that hospitality schools student need better preparation in the areas of “using spreadsheet programs (i.e. Microsoft Excel)”, “using email systems (i.e. Outlook Express, Thunderbird)”, “using word processing programs (i.e. Microsoft Word)”, “Presenting data in an efficient manner”, “using point of Sale Systems (i.e. Micros), and “analyzing numerical data with computers (i.e. SPSS, Excel).”

Keywords

teaching, hotel technology applications, hospitality education

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Jan 7th, 8:00 AM Jan 7th, 9:15 AM

The Information Technology (IT) Skills of Hospitality School Graduates as Perceived by Hospitality Professionals

Hospitality schools aim to provide their graduates with the skills and tools that are necessary to succeed in a rapidly changing and developing industry environment (Swanger & Gursoy, 2010). Given that information technology (IT) applications have become an essential part of hotel operations, this paper investigates industry perspective on the IT skills of hospitality school graduates. 110 industry professionals have participated in the study.The findings of this study are useful to hospitality educators in making sure that the information technology skills needed by the industry from hospitality school graduates are covered in curriculum. A significant gap between the importance scores of different skills reported by industry professionals’ and their evaluation of recent graduates’ performance shows that there is a need to improve students’ IT skills. The results of the study indicate that hospitality schools student need better preparation in the areas of “using spreadsheet programs (i.e. Microsoft Excel)”, “using email systems (i.e. Outlook Express, Thunderbird)”, “using word processing programs (i.e. Microsoft Word)”, “Presenting data in an efficient manner”, “using point of Sale Systems (i.e. Micros), and “analyzing numerical data with computers (i.e. SPSS, Excel).”