Understanding Students’ Intentions to Join the Hospitality Industry: The Role of Emotional Intelligence, Service Orientation, and Industry Satisfaction
Abstract
A study of 246 hospitality degree students in Hong Kong and United States found that emotional intelligence has a strong effect on students’ intentions to pursue a career in the hospitality industry. The students’ service orientation has a similar but weaker effect. The study also found that this relationship is mediated by the degree to which these post-internship students were satisfied with working in the industry. Because emotional intelligence can be enhanced through education, hospitality educators can help develop their students’ emotional intelligence and service orientation and potentially increase their likelihood of developing successful careers within the industry.
Keywords
Emotional intelligence; service orientation to stay in the hospitality industry
Numerous educators and researchers are focusing on students’ career intentions, especially the degree to which they wish to develop careers in the hospitality industry (see, for example, Chang and Tse, forthcoming; Song and Chathoth 2008; Chuang and Dellmann-Jenkins 2010; Song and Chon 2012; Teng 2008; Wan, Wong, and Kong 2014). These studies are motivated in part by the acknowledgment that the hospitality industry seems not to be the most favored career track for many graduates of hospitality programs. For example, in one study, over 50 percent of students reported that they would only “possibly” seek jobs in hospitality (Richardson 2008). Similarly, a second study also found that only about half of the graduates in their sample sought their first jobs in the industry (King, McKercher, and Waryszak 2003). Other research has confirmed that hospitality careers are less than popular career choices for many students (e.g., Chuang and Dellmann-Jenkins 2010; Richardson 2009; Song and Chathoth 2008, 2011). Thus, despite the increasing demand, a substantial proportion of college-educated professionals are not attracted to careers in hospitality, and the industry faces the critical problem of attracting and retaining its future talent (Barron 2008; Song and Chon 2012). This phenomenon causes us to ask: What factors are influencing students’ career decisions and their intentions to join the industry? Our study answers a decade old call “to investigate why so few students end up in the industry” (King, McKercher, and Waryszak 2003,415) and to develop strategies to encourage more graduates to develop careers in this ever-growing sector.
While indeed there are specific industry characteristics (such as salary, work-life balance, and perceived lack of work challenge and opportunities) that strongly influence students’ carrer decisions (Kelley-Patterson and George 2001; O’Leary and Deegan 2005; Richardson 2009), individual-level traits also influence their decision making (Chuang and Dellmann-Jenkins 2010; Teng 2008), and it is useful for both selection and training to determine which traits are salient. Research has shown that several individual factors , such as general self-efficacy, vocational interest, and person-job fit perceptions, all influence students’ hospitality career aspirations (Song and Chon 2012). Yet beyond this general assessment, we know little about the ways that characteristics inherent in and important to how individuals engage and interact with customers influence students’ career plans.