These transversal skills promoted in individuals through internships and Erasmus mobility are nowadays considered a relevant issue in terms of employability but are still not deeply researched by scientific research in Portugal, concerning the specific case of professional activities within Hospitality Management. We revise these concepts and contexts, and also their interrelations and importance, especially for the Hospitality Management education and practices.
Additionally, the present study aims to expose and discuss the points of view of a group of undergraduate students about: i) internships and Erasmus mobility programs ii) their perception of the importance of those contexts for their employability.
So, with an exploratory and a quantitative methodology, this study presents the surveyed students characterisation and explores some important aspects of their internships and mobility experiences, and also their employability expectations generated by those experiences. Besides the presentation of the main results of the ongoing survey we compare the results about the mobility experiences and the associated perception of employability with some of the results presented in The Erasmus Impact Study [1] which is a large and recent study made at a European level.
Finally, we reflect about the study limitations and the main conclusions extracted from the study. We also underline some possible implications of this work and research issues to deepen in the future