Abstract:

The aim of this study is to compare the achievement of students’ tourism competences when developing internships depending on the geographic situation.

In order to analyse these effects we present an empirical study to know the relationship between geographic situation and internships in achieving tourism competences. We will conduct the analysis from the point of view of the real achievement of these skills by means of the supervisor's evaluation. In this sense, we use data from questionnaires distributed among students' supervisors. A total of 389 students' evaluations of the Bachelor Degree in Tourism and Hospitality Management at the Universitat Ramon Llull were obtained. The questionnaires measure the students’ real competences achievement according to the evaluation of their supervisors.

With the reforms involved in the Bologna Process, studies on skills and their relationship with the teaching/learning process have risen considerably. Thus, we have seen that there are many experiences in the scientific literature addressed to the study of competences, in general, and their relationship to education. However, to our knowledge, there are no studies that analyse the achievement of tourism competences by students when participating in internships, and more specifically, the potential influence of geographic variables.
Our main aim is to analyse whether or not there are differences in how students achieve tourism competences when participating in internships, comparing the internship typology (national or international) and the geographic area (Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Asia).

The results show that, the students' acquisition of tourism skills is superior for students developing national internships, except for competences related to initiative and entrepreneurial spirit and knowledge of the operating procedures. We haven’t found significant differences in the mean values of the majority of basic and specific competences, however we have found significant differences for generic competences related to ethics, self-knowledge, empathy, interculturality, organizational culture and change.

Regarding the geographic variable, the obtained results show that North America and Asia have the highest values for most of the competences. Moreover, these values are always higher than in Europe. In this case, when comparing the area where students develop internships we obtain significant differences in the mean values of a large number of competences, specifically competences related to communication, attitude, social and relationship skills and operational procedures skills.

From these results we can conclude that the geographic area is an important variable to take into account when participating in internship programs in terms of achievement of tourism competences.

Keywords:

Internship, competences, Higher education, tourism, geographic.