Undergraduates’ Perception of Human Resource Requirements in Hospitality Industry in Sri Lanka

Tourism and hospitality industry has been confronted with the problem of attracting and retaining quality employees that has led to a shortage of skilled personnel to staff the ever-growing number of tourism and hospitality businesses and the turnover rate in the hospitality sector rose due to several factors, including higher proportions of teenagers, students and part-year employees in the industry workforce. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to identify the expectation of undergraduate who willing to work in hospitality and to identify the relationship between industry perception of undergraduates and willingness to working with hospitality industry. Both quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods were deployed. Despite many students find the nature of the job too stressful and strenuous. Students have also cited reasons such as long working hours, shift work, dealing with unpredictable circumstances in the job environment and having lower starting remuneration as compared other industries. The universities also play a major role in influencing the choice of career of their students through their faculty, curriculum, resources and links to the industry. Therefore the universities would need to manage student expectations prior to and during the course of studies to encourage students to stay within the industry after graduation.