The impact of undergraduate tourism students creative thinking leves on food and beverage department attitudes: A case study from the Eastern Black Sea region

The tourism sector is one of the most labor-intensive industries worldwide, and it depends on people. Food and beverage companies, whose numbers are rising day by day and which produce and market products with similar characteristics, should encourage employees to use their emotions as well as their mental and physical abilities to meet changing consumer expectations, compete with other companies, evolve individual creativity into organizational creativity, and satisfy guests. In order to enhance manufacturing processes, diversify products, reduce costs, and maintain quality, the service need a competent and educated personnel that is trained and managed in accordance with the company's requirements. In this study, it was aimed to determine the relationship between the creative thinking levels of undergraduate students receiving tourism education and their attitudes towards the food and beverage department. For this purpose, quantitative research method was used and the universe of the research consists of undergraduate students studying at Avrasya University, Giresun University, Gümüşhane University and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University in the Eastern Black Sea Region in the 2020-2021 academic year. Using the a questionnaire technique, data were electronically gathered from 335 students who were selected using a simple random sampling method and the results were evaluated. To determine whether the opinions of the students who participated in the study regarding their levels of creativity and attitudes toward the food and beverage department differ according to their character, the t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were conducted. While the participants' opinions on the level of creativity and their attitudes toward the food and beverage department do not differ based on gender, age, department, class, or type of high school graduate, a significant difference was found based on the university and the unit where they worked for the longest. On the other hand, it was found that there was a significant and positive relationship between the level of creative thinking and their attitudes toward the food and beverage department, according to the correlation analysis carried out to reveal the relationship between students' creativity levels and their attitudes toward the food and beverage department. With the exception of the dimensions of interest in the food and beverage department and the social status of the work in the food and beverage department, a significant relationship between the level of creativity and attitude dimensions was also discovered.