Determining the Training Needs of Personal Excellence among Undergraduate Tourism Students

Abstract

Taiwan’s government has recently begun making efforts to develop a more diverse travel environment and attract more inbound tourists and domestic travellers. As a result, tourism colleges and institutes have grown rapidly to meet the significantly mounting job demands. In response to these developments, many academic authorities in Taiwan have recently made efforts to promote students’ personal excellence. Given the scarcity of literature concerning issues related to personal excellence, this study aims to empirically detect areas of personal excellence that can be improved upon in further trainings of undergraduate tourism students. The method of fuzzy entropy based VIKOR, a multi-criteria decision analysis method, is performed to prioritize training needs for enhancing levels of personal excellence among tourism students. The results are used to develop personal excellence training programs aimed at improving students’ weaknesses in personal excellence, which can benefit them in their professional lives as well as their personal lives.