Journal of Tourism and Services - Vysoká škola obchodní v Praze

shaping of tourism graduates, contrasting the unskilled employees who
receive training on the job according to the employer’s needs [34; 4]. It’s
also the role of HEIs to establish closer links with the industry sector, and
internships are a fundamental element in this liaison, in order to inform
and alert employers that the qualification of HR in the Tourism industry
is essential for providing a quality service and satisfying the consumer,
whose first contact with any destinations will necessarily be with the
individuals working in tourism related sectors.
Finally, governmental institutions, according to Zagonari’s study are
scarcely committed to a “well-coordinated long-term investment in tourism
training and education”, except for “the Republic of Ireland and Canada”
[34: 5]. As for the Portuguese example, one may find emphasised in official
documents, which acquaint the national strategy for tourism [26], that the
qualification of HR is an element to be strengthen in order to enrich the
moments of interaction with the tourist. Furthermore, the document
envisages the training of HR according to the sector’s needs, underlining
the importance of mobilizing HEIs to offer international-standard courses,
establishing “partnerships with leading international schools and
companies from the sector”, promoting “research activities in the area of
hospitality management in accordance with international best practices”
and stimulating “curricular development and student internships in
various disciplinary areas (…) in the tourism sector” [26: 106].
The participation of HEIs and the role of internships are well recognized
elements for the Portuguese political strategy to qualify HR for the
Tourism industry as stated in the document mentioned before.
Nonetheless, detailed information on how to involve the different
stakeholders and on how to listen to all of them and coordinate their
interaction in a balanced and advantageous approach, answering to the
sector national and global needs is still to be defined.
Taking into consideration the described internal and external
frameworks for the subject of internships and employability in Tourism
HE, we will proceed by outlining the Portuguese setting, analyzing the
national offer of Tourism courses in the HE context and considering that
it has been developed following the application of the Bologna guidelines,
which consider the possibility of internships as a part of the study
programmes for 1 st cycle courses, either in the public or private
subsystems.
In fact, Portuguese public HEIs, has the study only considers theses
ones, have generally followed this tendency as shown in Table 1. As one
may see, thirteen of the nineteen (68.42%) HEIs, have mandatory
internships in Tourism related courses, enhancing the importance for the
practical component in the students’ curricula. Analyzing all Tourism
related courses (38) provided by the HE national system, 25 (65.79%)
include a practical component in their curricula, six of them offer two
internships experiences throughout the course and one offers three. Most
of these internships are performed in the last semester of the course, with
25