THE INTERNATIONAL TOURISM INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE: PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE, LEARNING FROM THE PAST
    
    Graham D. Busby University of Plymouth Plymouth, United Kingdom e-mail: gbusby@plymouth.ac.uk
    
    ABSTRACT
    
    A large number of British university programmes in tourism feature an internship of some sort; this element is intended to provide a vocational dimension to what can be a predominantly academic curriculum. Not only do internships provide familiarity with professional practice, they raise graduate labour-market value and, arguably, enhance the individual’s maturity before returning to the final degree year. This paper utilizes research, funded by the CEPPL CETL (UK government-funded Centre for Professional Placement Learning – Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning), into the experiences of students on twelve-month internship away from the UK.
    
    Key Words: internships, tourism sandwich placements, cooperative education
    
    INTRODUCTION Higher education internships, placements, cooperative education and the practicum are a variety of terms for what is, essentially, a period of employment in the tourism and hospitality industry; other terms used are work experience and cooperative education (Busby 2003: Inui et al 2006; Leslie & Richardson 2000; Waryszak 1997). Such internships may be as little as four weeks or as long as a year – or even fourteen months (Busby et al 1997), domestic or internationally-based. They may form the ‘bridge’ between the academic curriculum and industry (Airey & Johnson 1999; Busby, Brunt & Baber 1997) and, given that some sectors evidence a preference for a tourism or hospitality degree (Busby 2001), undoubtedly provide essential commercial awareness for the intern. The extensive study of UK tourism degree provision undertaken by Busby & Fiedel (2001:517) revealed 23 per cent of courses with a one year internship and others ranging from one to seven months; in some cases, overseas internships were compulsory – “usually those courses that have a particularly international focus and/or require the student to apply a language”. The development of a range of transferable skills, from teamwork to presentations and IT ability also received wide attention; the inclusion of transferable skills in the curriculum being intended to prepare graduates for other careers if they so choose. Clearly, a university can enhance the graduate’s chance of finding and succeeding in employment when it offers more than the development of disciplinary knowledge i.e. learner autonomy, skills and knowledge (Walker, 1994). Turning to what the aims are considered to be for students undertaking an internship, Busby (2002) identified the following – • • • • • to experience employment and, where appropriate, accept responsibility for the completion of tasks and the supervision of others to obtain an insight into management and management methods to gain greater maturity and self-confidence to be involved in the diagnosis and solution of problems to develop attitudes and standards appropriate to career aspirations
    
    This paper utilizes research, funded by the CEPPL CETL (UK government-funded Centre for Professional Placement Learning – Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning), into the experiences of students on twelvemonth internship away from the UK. These students were embarked on one of the following named degrees: BSc (Honours) Tourism Management, International Tourism Management, Business and Tourism, Hospitality Management, International Hospitality Management, Tourism and Hospitality Management, or Cruise Operations Management. The research reported here draws on tape-recorded interviews with students in the first few months of the final degree year – up to four months after the internship ended. CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND Cassells (1994) conceptualised employer involvement with internships as being at one of three levels arms length relationships, partnerships or strategic alliances - in terms of how the student fares. For internships based with ‘arms length’ organisations, the relationship is virtually just an economic transaction, whereby the university supplies students for opportunities which may be difficult to fill with dependable, locally-sourced labour. The employer is aware that the student is likely to ‘stay the course’ simply in order to obtain the requisite credits or certificate. However, it is argued that there are two types of ‘arms length’ internship: those which work satisfactorily, albeit without much of a challenge, and those whereby the students are “exploited by their employers” (McMahon & Quinn 1995:15). Cassells (1994) refers to partnerships “where employers and educators really want to develop the relationship to the benefit of both” (Cassells 1994:3). Arguably, this is the arrangement for most internships and it may result in no recruitment in some years simply because of budgetary or staffing issues. However, Busby (2005:96) refers to a variation: “what might be termed the personality-based, non-corporate relationship. This will occur when key personnel move to a new organisation and begin to recruit students, for placement, from the same university because they are familiar with the average student performance, institutional procedures and academic staff”. Few universities will possess what Cassells refers to as strategic alliances “if only because the dynamic nature of the industry can mean that budgets preclude recruiting a student one year and not the next” (Busby
    
    2002:224). At the University of Plymouth Business School, with regard to tourism and hospitality awards, there are probably only three extant strategic alliances, namely, with three cruise lines and one North American tour operator, the latter employing nine or ten interns per year. With respect to the cruise lines, this has come about as a result of development of the Cruise Management degree; P & O, Princess Cruises and Cunard were involved in the curriculum design and guarantee to take a number of interns each year (Gibson 2008); as Dale & Robinson (2001) observe, this encourages rather closer stakeholder links. Bearing in mind these three types of relationship between employers and universities, with regard to the long internship, this paper remarks on the experiences of those students who have gone overseas, in terms of issues they have had to address, contact with university, friends and family, and whether any of these issues are impacted by the type of relationship as outlined by Cassells. ISSUES First and foremost, a key issue to emerge from the face-to-face interviews was that of communication. DW, for example, was one of the interns working on board a cruise ship; he makes the following point: “in terms of access to e-mails aboard ship, it’s all done via a moving, roving satellite thing (sic). The connection is very unstable at times, at all times it’s very slow. It’s equivalent to a dial-up connection...as a result of this, any sort of labourintensive, graphic-based websites won’t load”. MR, working for the same cruise line, commented that she had used the telephone despite the cost implications from being onboard; however, it was only with regard to submission of the regular progress reports that caused difficulties. VR, on another ship, made the following observation: “Well… there is a delay on the phone. For example, when I phone my mum, you’ll find you have to say ‘over’ when you finish the conversation because there is a five second delay” – this seems hardly a difficulty and, with regard to progress reports, there is no penalty if some delay occurs with receipt by the Placements Office. When asked how she stayed in contact, RI, on placement in the USA, said “well, phone cards, I rang home. It started off a couple of times a week, but by the end of the placement it was three to four weeks at a time! In addition, Facebook and MSN, I didn’t really send text messages because it too expensive for people here to receive”. A number of interns referred to the use of Facebook and the value of an intern group is now under consideration; intriguingly, in light of comments concerning access, JS, a cruise intern, stated that she used it a lot. Finally, ER, a cruise intern, and KW, with the Canadian tour operator, both extolled the virtues of using Skype. Given that these internships are international, the issue of languages might be expected to receive prominence; surprisingly, this hardly appeared. LD, one of those working in Toronto, for a tour operator, stated that “some of the French travel agents did not have a willingness to speak to you in English. They wanted you to talk to them in French, and having not done French for seven years, it was quite a struggle”. Interestingly, the cosmopolitan nature of Toronto also produced this statement from the same student: “there were times where you could transfer the call to someone who spoke French, or who spoke Spanish or Cantonese”. Accommodation, in the true sense, was not an issue for those on cruise internships whereas those in Canada had not sufficiently taken onboard the secondyear advice concerning ‘taking over’ departing interns’ accommodation and, more importantly, furniture given that condominiums are let unfurnished. Having stated that accommodation was not an issue for those on cruise ships, SW did not seem to appreciate being allotted a passenger cabin as opposed to a crew cabin, making the comment that: “At the same time though, xxxxx and I would probably have preferred to be in the crew area”. CONCLUSION This paper has addressed issues of communication, language and accommodation. Prior to Autumn 2008 and this targeted research, these issues had more of an anecdotal character, given that a number of staff are involved in the debriefing process and that a number of individuals do not turn up for such. This study secured approximately 90 per cent of possible returned international interns’ views. As such, the semi-structured interviews are argued to be representative of the cohort at large, probably of all interns on a long placement. Detailed awareness of issues and possible solutions will enhance the future experience of interns. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the issues raised tend to be independent of Cassells’ employer involvement types: for example, Princess Cruises, a strategic alliance partner, cannot easily address e-mail access issues. Interestingly, not one interviewee referred to being ‘thrown in at the deep end’, an observation made by Walmsley et al (2006) with regard to those on placement in SMEs (small and medium size tourism enterprises); this point is made because it might be expected that those employed in SMEs overseas
    
    would have the added issue of a different culture; all appear to have had some form of induction to their organisation, irrespective of business size. Not only do internships provide familiarity with professional practice, they raise graduate labour-market value and, arguably, enhance the individual’s maturity before returning to the final degree year. Furthermore, “education in ‘life experience’ terms” (Walmsley et al 2006:365) occurs and, it is argued, these two facets combined increase the ability to critically reflect on the tourism business advocated by Tribe (2001). REFERENCES Airey, D. & Johnson, S. (1999) The content of tourism degree courses in the UK, Tourism Management, 20 (2): 229-235. Busby, G. (2001) Vocationalism in higher level tourism courses: the British perspective, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 25 (1): 29-43. Busby, G. (2002) Tourism sandwich placements revisited. In B. Vukonić and N. Čavlek, (Eds.), Rethinking of Education and Training for Tourism (pp213-230). Zagreb: University of Zagreb. Busby, G. (2003) Tourism degree internships: a longitudinal study, Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 55 (3): 319-334. Busby, G. (2005) Work experience and industrial links. In D. Airey and J. Tribe (Eds.), An International Handbook of Tourism Education (pp 93-107). Elsevier: London. Busby, G., Brunt, P. & Baber, S. (1997) Tourism sandwich placements: an appraisal, Tourism Management, 18 (2): 105-110. Busby, G. & Fiedel, D. (2001) A contemporary review of tourism degrees in the UK, Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 53 (4): 501-522. Cassells, D. (1994) Employer/educator partnerships: harnessing employers’ contributions, paper presented at the National Liaison Group for Tourism in Higher Education Conference, London, 2 December. Dale, C. & Robinson, N. (2001) The theming of tourism education: a three-domain approach, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 13 (1): 30-34. Gibson, P. (2008) Cruising in the 21st Century: who works while others play?, International Journal of Hospitality Management, 27 (1): 42-52. Inui, Y., Wheeler, D. & Lankford, S. (2006) Rethinking tourism education: what should schools teach? Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Education, 5 (2): 25-35. Leslie, D. & Richardson, A. (2000) Tourism and cooperative education in UK undergraduate courses: are the benefits being realised? Tourism Management 21 (5): 489-498. McMahon, U. & Quinn, U. (1995) Maximizing the hospitality management student work placement experience: a case study, Education and Training, 37 (4): 13-17. Tribe, J. (2001) Research Paradigms and the Tourism Curriculum, Journal of Travel Research, 39 (4): 442-448. Walker, L. (1994) The New Higher Education Systems, Modularity and Student Capability. In A. Jenkins and L. Walker (Eds.), Developing Student Capability through Modular Courses. (pp 87-96). London: Kogan Page.
    
    Walmsley, A., Thomas, R. & Jameson, S. (2006) Surprise and sense making: undergraduate placement experiences in SMEs, Education + Training, 48 (5) 360-372. Waryszak, R.Z. (1997) Student perceptions of the cooperative education work environment in service industries, Progress in Tourism and Hospitality Research, 3, 249-256.
    
     

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