Cultural Awareness: Preparing our indigenous students for International Placement

Are indigenous students prepared for international placement and future employment? This is a relevant and important topic as every year at least 1 in 3 of our students in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management decides to go International for their placement experience of 48 weeks at level 5. Many of these students will then return and enter the workforce in the Hospitality and Tourism sectors either here in Northern Ireland, the wider UK or abroad. In recent years the Hospitality and Tourism sectors in Northern Ireland have become increasingly multi-cultural in that 1 in 4 (25%) employees are born abroad (Labour Force Survey, 2015), therefore new graduates, ready to enter employment need to be prepared and be more culturally aware when interacting with both the employee and customer alike. Cultural Diversity is an increasingly important factor in working life as tourism organisations, worldwide, become more diverse in terms of the race, ethnicity, natural origin and other personal characteristics of their members, Shaw and Barrett-Power (1998). The relevance of this project is to gain the perceptions of Hospitality and Tourism students currently taking international placement and to investigate how best to prepare these students to become global citizens and be more culturally aware before going on international assignments and/or entering the multi-cultural world of work. If the preparation is successful then harnessing cultural differences will create a productive environment in which everybody feels valued, where their talents are being fully utilised and in which organisational goals are met (Devine et al, 2009).