Developing an index of the Malaysian tourism and hospitality graduates competencies

• Main Authors: Mohd Shariff, Nurhazani, Zainol Abidin, Azlan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak 2015
• Subjects: GV Recreation Leisure
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/16817/1/Vol16.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/16817/; http://www.ijbs.unimas.my/content-abstract/current-issue/item/324-developing-an-index-of-the-malaysian-tourism-and-hospitality-graduates-competencies.html

The current study develops an index of tourism and hospitality graduates competencies specifically for the case of Malaysian graduates.The process involved four major stages begins with the process of generating the competencies from the literature search, follows by the process of verifying the competencies, then testing for reliability and finally developing the index.The process of generating the competencies ended up with 73 competencies while the competencies verification which involved 30 experts in the tourism and hospitality industry indicated 40 competencies to be further tested.The process of testing for reliability involved a pilot study of 116 respondents and the findings indicated all competencies have high alpha value above 0.5 and were included to be tested for factor analysis in the index development stage.The index of Malaysian tourism and hospitality graduates’ competencies consists of eight domains namely Management and Technology Competencies, Leadership Competencies, Organizational Competencies, Personal Effectiveness Competencies, Business-Oriented Competencies, Self-Oriented Competencies, Customer Related Competencies and Innovative Competencies.The index has gone through a systematic process in developing such a tool and significantly contributes to the identification and selection of quality graduates to serve within the tourism and hospitality environment.