Determination of the opinions of students receiving tourism education at associate degree level from practical hotel perspective

The tourism sector is developing and growing rapidly every single day. With its growth, it also brings significant employment opportunities. Therefore, it is an inevitable fact that the qualified human resources needed by the tourism sector are those who have received tourism education. The highest benefit from the tourism sector is only possible with an effective and quality tourism education. The main purpose of this research is to evaluate associate students' perceptions of the practice hotel who study tourism at Gaziantep University, Tourism and Vocational School of Hotel Management Department and Adıyaman University Vocational School of Social Sciences. To achieve this aim, a questionnaire was applied to 147 students who are students of Adıyaman University Vocational School of Social Sciences between the dates 03.10.2019-07.10.2019 and the 259 students who are students of Gaziantep University, Tourism and Vocational School of Hotel Management Department between the dates of 10.10.2019-15.10.2019. Within the scope of the research, the questionnaire form prepared for determining students' perceptions of the practice hotel consists of 2 dimensions as "Gaining Professional Experience" and "Vocational Training Opportunities". The arithmetic means, standard deviation, frequency and percentage values of the data obtained in this study using the quantitative method were calculated and Mann-Whitney U Test and Kruskal Wallis H test were performed to determine whether there was a significant difference between the variables. As a result of the research, it has been determined that the perceptions of the associate students who have received tourism education differed according to gender, class, department and program variables. On the other hand, no significant differences were determined according to the high school graduated, having professional experience in the tourism sector, working status in the application hotel and university variables. Besides, it has been determined that 406 associate degree tourism students who participated in the research are pleased to have practice hotels in their vocational school and they think that there should be a practice hotel in every vocational school that provides tourism education.