Abstract:
With tourism to play a key role in Sri Lanka's economic growth and development, the Hospitality industry also has been given allied importance. This industry is highly depending on human resource for profitable functioning and thereby putting the employers' expectations complicated and soaring towards the workforce who are joining with the organizations. In Sri Lanka, industry oriented higher education was introduced to the university system focusing on significant development of industries such as Tourism. With the low rates of job retention and the employers' pessimistic opinions regarding the government university hospitality graduates, this study has develops a conceptual frame work to find whether there is a gap between the expected and actual competencies and attitudes of those graduates from employers view point. Employers were asked to rate the importance of a selection of graduate competencies using a five-point Likert scale, and were asked to rate government graduates' performance for the same graduate competencies Descriptive statistics and paired t-test were conducted to analyze and elaborate the objectives of the research. The findings revealed significant differences in expected and actual status. Employers affirmed attitudes protrude for effective performance in hospitality industry while government graduates were found to be considerably lacking from those with a significant gap. Both graduates and the educators should scrutinize the gaps and invigorate the workforce to develop the Hospitality industry.
