An Analytical Study on Internship: 4-star Parsian Hotels in Tehran as Control Samples

Abstract: Nowadays hospitality industry has become one of the most important industries in the world
because it has brought lots of benefits for residences and governments basically. As the
nature of this industry is based on service, the role of people is significantly highlighted,
hence, the effects of human resource management which is responsible of employees- the
most valuable assets of hotel- is not evitable. One of the human resource management goals
is to train and develop employees for different positions in the hotel.
The present research aims to explore and develop the role of internship in hospitality
industry in Iran. The involved antecedents and outcomes of internship based on comparing
the ideas of industry stakeholders have been analyzed and then the elements of each factor of
internship have been prioritized.
The workplace learning is seen beneficial for both organization and participant. One of the
wonderful aspects of experiential learning is when an unpredictable situation occurs in
workplace, at this time well-trained employees show their performance. Internship is one of
the best ways of training as it deals with real world. Internship offers an opportunity to
students to face reality and helps them start their career. The relationship between
knowledgeable performances has been argued between managers and academia for a long
time. The outcomes of workplace learning can be service improvement, waste and workforce
turnover reduction, strengthening product quality, and increasing productivity in an
organization.
The methodology of this research is descriptive, quantitative approach has been employed for
this applied research, and the data gathering tool is a valid and reliable Likert-type
questionnaire. The employed data analysis instrument is SPSS (Ver. 16) and the analyses are
shown by survey method.
The results of the research reveal that the most important internship factors are “intern’s
quality”, “hotel handled program” and “feedbacks”, and at last “academic designed
program” respectively. Moreover, intern’s responsibility, hotel’s planned program, academic
introduction, tasks and duties given to intern, adjusted academic program with industry
needs, intern’s expectations and perceptions, and feedbacks to intern should be considered
prior to other elements in internship programs.