Tourism and Hospitality Graduates’ Perceptions of Creativity and Skill Development in Higher Education.

Abstract

Tourism and hospitality higher education has an important role to play in the preparation of graduates for an extremely competitive and fast changing labor market. Changes driven by digitalization, changing industry expectations, and the Covid-19 pandemic have made there is a greater need for creativity, transferable skills, and learning in employability. This research focuses on tourism and hospitality graduates’ perceptions of how higher education supports creativity and skill development and how these factors influence perceived employability. The study is based on Human Capital Theory and Graduate Capital Model. A quantitative approach to research was taken. A structured online questionnaire was created and brought about 121 valid responses. The collected data were analyzed with the help of descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and hypothesis testing using regression. The results of the empirical research suggest that graduates generally feel that there is good support for creativity and skills development in their higher education programmes. Creativity does show a strong and positive relationship with employability suggesting that graduates who feel their creativity was encouraged are also more confident about their career prospects. Skill development is also positively related to employability, although to a lesser degree than creativity. In addition, digital learning is found to have a positive impact on both the development of skills and employability. The results suggest that greater emphasis of higher education institutions should be given to creative teaching approaches, practical learning, industry collaboration and digital competencies in order to benefit graduate employability.