Students' Internship and the Higher Education in Tourism in Support of the Regional Businesses: Methodology

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to highlight the problems and opportunities for integrating university graduates in the tourism industry through their practical internship, and to propose a methodology for measuring its effectiveness. The research brings out the most common problems and peculiarities, in twelve countries, in the practical training of tourism students: overtime without payment; lack of supervision and control of the students’ performance; insufficient on-boarding; lack of on-the-job training; students become subject to dark leadership and are directly discriminated against or denied full rights to work and fair pay; gap between too high job expectations and reality; The curricula does not always meet the needs of the tourism practice. Based on the analysis of the students’ internship in the specialty "Tourism" at the University of Economics - Varna, a new methodology for measuring its effectiveness is proposed.