Undergraduates perceptions and attitudes towards career intention in tourism industry in Klang Valley / Fatin Afiqah Ab Aziz

Tourism industry in Malaysia showed a significant economic contribution to the country. Due to the economy contribution, Malaysia has prepared to provide continued supply of highly skilled, educated, experienced and well-trained workforce for the industry. Thus, Malaysia offered a vast tourism and hospitality courses in the country’s higher education institutions (HEIs). Since the tourism students are considered as the future face and potential employee who will help to retain the prosperity of the industry, it is noteworthy to investigate the career intention of undergraduate tourism students in Malaysia. Despite on some negative perceptions perceived by the students from the previous studies including low pay, high employee turnover rate, poor working condition, lack of security and poor working hours, this industry also perceived as glamorous, have huge job opportunities and offer job mobility. The purpose of the study is to examine the attitudes and perceptions of undergraduate tourism students towards their career intention in tourism industry. The study is exploratory and based on a quantitative approach. The factors that emerged from various study were career factors, nature of work and education. The hypotheses and supporting logic for linkages between the variables are drawn from several research foundation and theories. The proposed hypotheses were tested with data collected from undergraduate tourism students studying in Malaysian Institutions in Klang Valley. Path analysis with Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and Partial Least Squares – Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to test the proposed hypotheses. The results showed that despite on some negative perceptions perceived by tourism students from the previous studies, this study proved that the undergraduate tourism students in Klang Valley, Malaysia have a positive career intention in the industry. This study also revealed that the perceptions showed good predictor of the student’s career intention, but attitudes does not predict career intention directly. Apart from that, most of the undergraduate tourism students in this study perceived tourism industry in Malaysia as a job that is respected and an enjoyable. The result further suggests that the government, tourism stakeholders and educator must cooperate together to retain the potential employees in tourism industry. All stakeholders must take the standpoint to encourage the students to stay and contribute within this industry.