Abstract
The aim of this paper presentation is to show the employability of tourism graduates, using a three-way perspective. The concept of employability differs depending on the context, as well as the views of the people making employment decisions and those seeking employment. Graduates are not always employable, because they lack certain knowledge, skills, employability attributes, and practical work experience. Therefore, it has become imperative to ensure an adequate level of preparedness of tourism graduates, including their employability attributes, to enhance their chances of securing and sustaining employment in the tourism industry. The researcher adopted a sequential explanatory mixed method, which entailed combining quantitative and qualitative methods. The researcher conducted a quantitative survey on a purposive sample of 561 managers, supervisors and owners within the tourism industry and tourism graduates working in the tourism industry. The researcher used means, standard deviations, exploratory factor analysis and independent t-test. The qualitative research approach was applied to investigate graduate employability more in-depth. A total of twelve interviews were conducted with three academics within higher education institutions (HEIs) that offer a tourism qualification, three graduates working within the industry and three experts within the tourism industry. The researcher found a significant relationship between the professional skills, personality traits, knowledge skills and operation skill within the tourism industry. The researcher constructed a model to enhance graduate employability through a three-way perspective within the tourism industry. The model links all three partners the tourism graduate, tourism industry and Higher education institutions) that play a key role in the industry regarding the transfer of knowledge, skills and other employability attributes. The originality of this paper is that it constructed a model for the tourism industry to enhance graduate employability that links three partners, and creates further constructive debate.