Soft skills’ infusion in tourism curricula: scale development and validation

ABSTRACT

To stay competitive and enhance student employability, universities must continuously monitor the potential soft skills gap between their curriculum and industry demands in tourism and hospitality (T&H). This study aims to develop and validate a scale to measure soft skills integration in T&H programs. Using established scale development procedures, data from two student cohorts underwent exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The resulting two-factor, 30-item scale demonstrated high reliability and validity, identifying two dimensions: conceptual/creative and leadership/interpersonal. This scale can enhance T&H education by assessing how well universities equip students with essential soft skills for the industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Soft skills
• curriculum development
• tourism education
• hospitality education
• scale development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

At the time of data collection for this survey-based study, ethics approval was not required at the Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism. That said, all of the participants involved in the study were informed of this study’s purpose and were made aware of the confidentiality agreement (this study ensured that data were submitted anonymously and that the questionnaires were processed anonymously).

Additional information

Funding

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, L.P., upon reasonable request.