Integrating Curriculum on Service Attitude with Service-Learning into a Hospitality Course

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study aims to evaluate the effects of the integrated curriculum on hospitality university students’ service attitudes. We adapted a four-stage process to implement an integrated course in service-learning and applied the text mining technique to analyze meaningful themes. The findings suggest that university students’ reflections indicate a developing understanding of attitudes in the context of hospitality and the acquisition of supporting attributes such as friendliness, empathy, enthusiasm, and problem solving. The attributes are comprised of 71 main themes of service attitude derived from the course. Specific theoretical and practical implications are provided on integrating service-learning into hospitality courses.