Abstract

Competency related studies and adoption of competency based approaches have now been acknowledged as a solution to the problems of human resource management and to the obsoleteness of the concepts and their application in the era of technological advancement and globalization. Quality human resource plays a dominant role for the success of tourism enterprises as the industry being a service intensive in nature. Ironically, there are a number of studies that indicate a constant dissatisfaction of the industry people with respect to the competence level of the tourism professionals especially freshers completing formal education in tourism studies. Competency based research is relevant in tourism industry as the industry has been facing problems and constraints viz. shortage of qualified manpower, tourism training infrastructure and qualified trainers. Besides, an overwhelming success of tourism has given rise to a pressing demand for quality professional acumen. To overcome these challenges there is a need for research in competency profiling of tourism professionals. The present study is an initiative to address these issues related to Human Resources in tourism industry by finding the importance and performance of the identified competencies with the application of the Importance Performance Analysis (IPA).