An Analysis of the Challenges Faced by Hospitality Educators While Pursuing Ph.D.

With research gaining a lot of importance in today's world, the educators cannot be ignorant of this field and has to develop knowledge and skills to participate in active research. In view of the changing role of educators, it has become the need of the hour for the faculty to pursue Ph.D. However, for non-conventional professional courses like "Hotel Management" the shift is a little challenging since majority of the Hotel Management programmes offered across the country are Under Graduate level. The study aimed at analyzing the various challenges faced by hospitality educators in pursuing Ph.D. in the relevant field. The findings suggest that time constraint, job commitments, inadequate information&knowledge about research and lack of research culture are the major challenge faced by educators in pursuing their Ph.D. Moreover, collecting the required primary data from the industry is a challenging task due to the characteristic operational centric approach of the industry professionals. Effective time management is the key to overcome these challenges and the faculty can gain knowledge and confidence in research process by practicing research actively and networking with other research groups who are involved in research on topics that interests them.