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Abstract
Although internships have been widely incorporated into the hospitality curriculum, primarily students’ perceptions toward internship quality are addressed in the literature, which lacks a deeper insight into the perceptions of industry organizations and academic institutions. This study makes an initial attempt to fill this gap in the literature by involving all three stakeholder groups—student interns, industry organizations, and academic institutions—in the discussion. Using the analytic hierarchy process method, the results show that industry organization plays a critical role in determining the quality of hospitality internship programs and that the development of practical skills acts as the strongest influencing factor, followed by supervisor leadership. The results of the study lay the groundwork for the development of an objective evaluation model for hospitality internship programs, allowing both industry and academia to identify areas of weakness and make further improvements to quality for student interns.