A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE CAREER PERCEPTIONS OF TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY STUDENTS BEFORE AND DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

This study determined and compared the career perceptions of Tourism and Hospitality undergraduate students, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, in an emerging economy country, the approach is mixed methods and simple purposive random sampling technique. Responses from 212 students enrolled in the year 2022-II were obtained for the quantitative analysis. The Wilcoxon Mann-Whitney test showed that the null hypothesis is rejected since the overall career perception was p = 0.000000159 and "p" is less than 0.05, so there is a significant difference in the career perception of students before and during the pandemic. For the qualitative part, through the interview guide, the results revealed that students perceive that the situation of the tourism industry has been severely affected; their career opportunities were entirely uncertain. Finally, it is proposed to implement a career opportunities program that caters to the desires and needs of the students to help them adapt to current events.