Entrepreneurial Competency of Tourism Students: A Basis for Enhancement, Opportunities and Program

Pursuing entrepreneurship has become a popular career path, especially when there’s an existing personal drive. Preparing students with the capabilities needed to become self-reliant professionals is seen as a practical approach to meet the evolving demands of the job market. Entrepreneurship plays a key role in the economy, sparking innovation and supporting overall economic development (Chilenga et al., 2022). Entrepreneurs make a wide range of contributions, including generating employment, encouraging fresh ideas, boosting market competition, and strengthening the economy’s ability to adapt. They help build economic stability by creating diverse business opportunities. Entrepreneurship takes on many forms, each with its own purpose, traits, and impact. Local small business ventures, which serve as vital pillars of communities, differ from social enterprises that aim to tackle urgent social challenges. Entrepreneurship continues to be a valuable tool for job creation, reducing unemployment and poverty, and enabling young people to build their own businesses, chase their aspirations, and support the nation’s overall productivity and economic progress. Practical entrepreneurship education is still a relatively new concept, and only a small number of academic courses have implemented it so far. Still, this approach is essential for preparing learners to handle actual business situations and for building their belief in their own entrepreneurial capabilities. As described by Kyguolienė and Švipas (2019), competencies consist of a blend of connected knowledge, personal traits, mindsets, and abilities that play a key role in work effectiveness, match recognized standards, and can be improved through specific learning and development programs. During an entrepreneurship course, students noted a decline in their confidence regarding their own skills, as real-world experiences exposed areas where they struggled to manage the complexities of starting and running a business (Al Mamun et al., 2019). Tourism students, who will soon enter the industry as professionals, are in a strong position to take advantage of emerging opportunities. Yet, their potential for success in the fast-paced and competitive tourism sector is heavily influenced by the entrepreneurial abilities they build while in school. This research aims to evaluate the entrepreneurial skills of tourism students and examine ways to strengthen these competencies to better equip them for both the challenges and opportunities they’ll face as future entrepreneurs. This study aims to identify the entrepreneurial competencies of university tourism students. It addresses a research gap by exploring the combination of personal characteristics and acquired skills that influence entrepreneurial performance. Entrepreneurship education has been widely recognized as a vital component in helping students gain a clearer understanding of what entrepreneurship truly involves (Phuc et al., 2020). The tourism sector, being one of the most rapidly expanding industries worldwide, plays a crucial role in the economic progress of numerous nations. As globalization accelerates and demand for distinctive travel experiences rises, the tourism industry increasingly requires fresh, entrepreneurial solutions. Programs focused on entrepreneurship have been found to shape students’ self-perception regarding their entrepreneurial potential and highlight areas where their management skills may need further development (Ahmed & Kayat, 2019; Zovko et al., 2020). Grasping entrepreneurial competencies plays a vital role in achieving entrepreneurial success. Skills like innovation, calculated risk-taking, critical thinking, and sound decision-making empower tourism students to spot opportunities, create new ideas, and tackle obstacles in the business world. With these competencies, entrepreneurs are more prepared to launch and grow their ventures, respond to market shifts, and stay ahead of the competition (Somwethee, 2023). In response to the evolving environment, universities and academic departments have begun offering entrepreneurship-focused courses and setting up business incubators to support young entrepreneurs. Moreover, funding bodies and associations have stepped in to encourage entrepreneurship through various initiatives and support programs. This study aims to examine both the challenges and motivating factors that influence tourism students in enhancing their entrepreneurial skills, and to develop competency-building models within the tourism sector that can serve as alternative policy suggestions for the university to foster long-term growth in entrepreneurial capacity among its tourism students.