An evaluation of teaching methods of entrepreneurship in hospitality and tourism programs

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has become an important subject in many undergraduate and postgraduate programs in hospitality and tourism schools since it aims to prepare and train future entrepreneurs to venture into business. This paper critically reviews and evaluates different methods of teaching the subject. In particular, it provides discussions about the aims of teaching entrepreneurship and refers to the challenges and difficulties of doing so in hospitality and tourism programs (HTP). An emerging conclusion of the paper is that although traditional techniques such as lecturing, tutorial and the case study seem to have been commonly used in delivering entrepreneurship subject, no single teaching method appears to be adequate to achieve the objectives of the course. There has to be a link between theory and practice in order to ensure future innovation in HTP. Therefore, instructors teaching entrepreneurship should consider the contextual factors and, based on this, combine a number of teaching methods in order to provide students with wide range of required skills and an up-to-date knowledge of the entrepreneurial process.