An Investigation into Perception of Hospitality Graduates towards Hospitality Industry

Hospitality industry is one of the most dynamic industries in India. It has shown its effect in country's GDP and in employment generation too. According to India Tourism statistic there is 5.9 % annual growth rate for foreign tourist's arrival and 11.4 % for domestic tourists in 2013. The hospitality industry is the 3rd largest foreign exchange earner accounting for 6.23 % of India GDP and 8.78 % of India total employment according to planning commission of India. When Hospitality industry is showing consistent growth, it also requires trained manpower to meet the demand. To full fill this demand many new institutions are coming up with hospitality courses in their profile. National council for hotel management and catering technology, the pioneer in hospitality educations in India has also increased its intake by opening of new IHMs and increasing student's intake in its current institutes. Many universities have introduced hospitality and tourism in their course content as a separate discipline. Not only this, many private institutes are also offering their diploma/undergraduate courses in hospitality field. This growth in number of students choosing hospitality as a field to study shows the changes in common people's perception towards hospitality education. Therefore a study is conducted to understand the perception of the hospitality graduates towards hospitality industry. The present study underlines the factors that influence the mindset of the youth and shape their perception in opting for hospitality programmes as their career choice. A structured questionnaire is developed on the basis of review of literature taking 21 variables. Around 325 hospitality graduates from various Institutes of Hotel Management (IHM), Private Hotel Management Institutes (HMI) and University Teaching Department participated in the study. Factor Analysis with varimax rotation is applied. As a result five factors are extracted that are found to have influence on the perception of hospitality graduates towards hospitality Industry.