Internship Program: Does it Strengthen or Weaken Tourism Students’ motivation?

Abstract

One of the students' orientations in choosing a department in college is their future career. However, several previous studies confirmed that learning experiences can influence students' future interest in continuing their careers in line or even leave it. This study aims to investigate the influence of tourism students' internship experience on their motivation to pursue career in the tourism and hospitality industry. Respondents were 72 tourism students of Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia who have finished their internship programs in 2015. Data collection was carried out for one month in two methods by sending questionnaires to the email of each respondent and selfadministrative questionnaires. Simple linear regression was employed to analyze the data. The result showed that internship program experience did not have significance influence on students' motivation to pursue career in Tourism Industry.