Most undergraduate hospitality management students have experiential learning modules as part of their graduation requirement. How such experiential learning opportunities are perceived by hospitality management students and graduates is a critical component of understanding whether such requirements are beneficial to the student as a program graduate. At issue is whether there is any correlation between these experiential learning perceptions and experiences, and the unusually high rate of turnover amongst entry level managers in the hospitality management industry, and specifically with respect to those who have just completed an undergraduate hospitality management program.

Despite research that suggests a positive correlation between having graduated from a hospitality management program, and the likelihood of success in the hospitality business, there are statistics that may indicate otherwise and which may warrant further review and analysis. Because undergraduate hospitality management programs vary from institution to institution, the reality is that hospitality management graduates experience a wide variety of lessons. Research portends that increased “integration between education and industry is required for better education outcomes and better industry inputs, as noted in a study conducted to examine the skills required for hospitality graduates in the hotel industry” (Alhelalat, 2015).

At the same time however, it is a widely known fact that managers who are graduates of a hospitality program, and those who are not, possess entirely different skill sets. This is an important distinction, when one considers that “the hospitality industry in the United States, which directly employs 7.9 million individuals, has been identified as one of six priority sectors likely to drive domestic employment growth over the next 10 years” (Johnson, 2015).

By 2021, it is anticipated that new projects in the hospitality “sector could add between 2.1 and 3.3 million jobs” (Johnson, 2015). Through mid-2014, the travel industry alone created 737,000 new jobs. This fact is significant because this travel industry related metric outpaced “job creation in the rest of the economy by 42 percent” (Johnson, 2015). There is clearly a demand for such hospitality related employment in the United States, where there are “383,527 rooms, representing 3,183 hotels. This denotes a 39.1 percent increase in rooms under construction as compared to 2013” (Johnson, 2015).

Initial research shows that “hotel executives believe that hospitality graduates have better communication, teamwork, situation analysis, operational skills, information search, critical thinking, initiative, organizing, and self-development skills than non-hospitality graduate employees” (Alhelalat, 2015). Such research further suggests that hospitality management program graduates have increased abilities related to operations, technology applications, knowledge of different cultures, information search, problem solving, leadership, and teamwork (Alhelalat, 2015). Indeed, these are skills that non-graduate hospitality managers have typically had to learn on-the-job.

Despite the positive tone of the above-referenced study, as stated herein from the outset, there remains the issue of industry wide turnover among newly minted hotel management graduates working in the hospitality industry. A viable starting point for analyzing such situation, would be to obtain further information concerning the real impact of experiential learning opportunities provided in a hospitality management program, and how such opportunities or experiences, do or do not relate to the realities of work in the hospitality industry on a full time basis.

Given the foregoing, it is important to examine and understand student opinions concerning the educational opportunities provided to them through hospitality management program experiential learning laboratories, and in particular, whether or not such opportunities were of benefit to them once engaged in entry-level positions within the hospitality industry. Due to the demands of the job and the perceived level of preparedness for the same, this study endeavors to explore reasons behind the high rate of turnover among this group of hospitality management graduates.