Bridging the Skills Gap between Tourism Industry Needs and Tertiary Education Offerings: An Empirical Investigation in the Context of Bangladesh

Abstract

Tourism higher education in Bangladesh has undergone a swift growth without an equal adjustment to industry expertise needs, leading to ongoing issues with graduate employability. This paper examines the level of skills gap between the skills provided by tertiary level institutions that provide tourism education and the skills required in the tourism and hospitality industry in Bangladesh, and especially in the hotel industry. A mixed-method research design was adopted, and qualitative data were obtained by conducting in-depth interviews with 17 tourism educators and industry professionals, which were analysed via content analysis to determine the key dimensions of skills. The structured surveys were conducted to gain quantitative data that included 41 professionals in the hotel industry and 45 final-year and postgraduate tourism students in the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management at the University of Rajshahi. Independent sample t-tests were used to test the differences between the provision of institutional skills and industry expectations in both soft and hard skills. The results show that there are statistically significant disparities in most of the skill categories, such as communication, leadership, behavioural, information technology, front desk operations, housekeeping, food and beverage production and service, and sales and marketing skills. Although relative strength can be observed in terms of the theoretical knowledge and the transferable skills chosen by tourism education institutions, the respondents in the industry emphasize more on the practical competencies, multilingual communications, digital literacy, operational abilities, and workplace flexibility. The research highlights the necessity of curriculum change, improvement of industry-academia partnership, longer internships, and practice-based learning methods. The results have strong policy implications for policymakers, curriculum developers, and administrators of tourism education in Bangladesh in the context of optimizing graduate employability and enhancing sustainable workforce development within the Bangladesh tourism industry.