Company Internships

Abstract

Practical experience has increasingly become an important component of university training. Institutions have made efforts to provide students with the opportunity to experience business reality. To many students, a curricular internship is the first contact with the work market. The present work analyses this discipline in the context of the Master in Tourism Planning and Management of the University of Vigo. The research universe encompasses 182 internships, which took place from 2008 to 2014. Data was collected through structured questionnaires, which aimed to obtain information on the students' specific areas of interest within the tourism industry, their level of satisfaction with the internship program and whether they were hired by the host company afterwards. The findings show that both parts—students and companies—are highly satisfied with the experience in great majority of cases, and that curricular internships have been an indispensable tool for preparing these students to the demanding tourism industry labor market.