Perception of hospitality and tourism management undergraduate students toward department and university attributes

Yu-Ting Lin, Purdue University

Abstract

The number of undergraduate hospitality and tourism management (HTM) programs has grown rapidly in the United States and the programs are currently facing increased competition. Therefore, quality becomes an important issue for them to retain students. However, most of the previous research was concerned with the teaching quality or the academic quality. There is a need to find out students’ perceived satisfaction with the program and university in general. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to investigate students’ perceived satisfaction levels with department and university attributes. More specifically, there are two objectives for the study: (1) to examine students’ perceived satisfaction levels with the attributes, (2) to examine how demographics affect students’ satisfaction levels with the attributes. The results show that students were most satisfied with the institutional attributes, but they were less satisfied with the physical and interactive attributes. The significant differences in satisfaction levels with certain attributes between different demographic groups of students also were reported. The findings can provide guidelines to improve other undergraduate HTM programs which have some similarities with the midwestern university’s HTM program. Also implications of the study are discussed. Key words: hospitality and tourism management, higher education, student satisfaction, service quality

Degree

M.S.

Advisors

Adler, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Educational evaluation|School administration|Higher education

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