Abstract:

Consumer preferences at the interface between client and tourism service provider are characterized by large changes occurring nowadays. Observation of these changes may help in determining future required competencies required by an employee of a tourism service provider as well as technological trends used in communication and concluding transactions between companies and consumers.

Accordingly, it is useful to analyse students' experiences on searching a tourism service to understand their preferences and in a second stage to apply this experiences to build knowledge for future job engagement as a potential tourism service providers.

This paper presents the first step of an ongoing investigation that focuses on the tourist preferences of university students. We report and discuss the result of a survey conducted involving the students of Tourism management at the Akademii Wychowania Fizycznego im. Jerzego Kukuczki in Katowice - Poland. Structured questionnaires based on a 12-item importance scale were administered to a convenience sample of 120 respondents. Research questions are in the range of youth preferences regarding searching for information and communication with tourism service providers. Therefore, what payment channels are selected what are the preferences associated with the use of mobile applications in dynamically changing reality and websites. The changes taking place in 2015-2019 in the above areas was also be analysed. The research was carried out, in each case, in the spring months. For our survey, we used “Google form tool” and “Statistica 13” software suite. The χ2 test was used for data analysis.

From our research, it emerged that the preferred means of searching information about a tourism service provider searching the web, for communication purposes, the email and mobile phone are the most important software/device; Booking.com resulted to be the most popular tourism platform. The analysis of personal experience and construction of knowledge of students of Tourism management at the Akademii Wychowania Fizycznego im. Jerzego Kukuczki in Katowice has influences in the restructuration of the course syllabuses on “Information and Communication Technologies in tourism organizations”.

Keywords:

Consumer preferences, Higher education students, Personal experience, Tourism Management, Tourism Service Providers.