EXPLORING HOSPITALITY STUDENTS’ EXPECTATION FOR INTERNSHIP PLACEMENT DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: THE CASE OF UNIVERSITI UTARA MALAYSIA STUDENTS

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the tourism and hospitality industry globally and the accommodation sector is amongst the hardest-hit. As for hospitality education, the internship program is part of the core component curricula for most undergraduate degrees which provide


INTRODUCTION
The Covid-19 outbreak in Malaysia began in January 2020 involving Chinese citizens who entered the Malaysian border through Singapore (Pung et al., 2020). To contain the virus from spreading, Malaysia had taken drastic measures by enforcing the Movement Control Order (MCO) on 18 th March 2020 which resulted in closure of all businesses except for those providing essential necessities. The Covid-19 pandemic had tremendous effect on Malaysia's tourism and hospitality industry. Visit Malaysia Year 2020 (VMY 2020) which targeted 30 million tourist arrivals was cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The travel bans worldwide in 2020 had impacted the hotel businesses. In Malaysia, the cancellations of hotel room bookings from January 2020 to March 2020 resulted in RM68,190,364 loss of revenue to the hotel sectors (MAH, 2020). The epidemic affected a large number of workers in the hotel business, with Kuala Lumpur hotels being the hardest affected, with 542 hotel staff losing their employment, 3641 receiving unpaid leave, and 2880 having their salary reduced.
In total, from 54,299 hotel workers in Peninsular Malaysia, 2041 were laid off, 5054 had their pay cut and 9773 were under unpaid leave (MAH, 2020).
Hospitality internship programs were introduced by most hospitality courses in their curriculum to enable future hospitality graduates to be adequately prepared for a hospitality career. The Bachelor of Hospitality Management (BHM) program was introduced in Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) in 2004 and the practicum course, GHOX 4912 is a compulsory course which hospitality students spend six months on real world job experience, both operational and management aspects. These students normally choose hotels as their internship placement. Covid-19 does not only affect the workers in the hotel industry, but also students undergoing internship in the hotel sectors. The Movement Control Order (MCO) enforced by the Malaysian government to curb the spread of Covid-19 resulted in some hotels needing to cease operations temporarily, and some were forced to shut down (MAH, 2020).
BHM students undergoing internship attachment in the industry during this time must comply with the MCO and were affected by the hotels' closure. Students faced early dismissal of internship although these students have another three to four months duration to complete their internship period. Some students were given work from home tasks by the organizations while several students have their allowance cut because hotels were not able to provide allowance due to losses in hotel revenues. Discontinuation of allowance during internship from the hotels caused difficulties for students during internship period as some use the allowance money to pay for room rental or to support their daily commute to the internship place.
Internships provide opportunities for students to adapt to unfamiliar circumstances in the actual workplace settings. A positive experience gained through the internship duration helps students to decide on their future career. The organizations that provide opportunities for hospitality students to undergo the internship enabled students to put into practice what they have learned in theory. However, the students may face some problems before embarking their internship journey. Furthermore, with the Covid-19 pandemic now affecting many hospitality operators in Malaysia, it is necessary to conduct the study on the impact of this pandemic to hospitality students going for internship during this difficult time. The study described in this paper is aimed to investigate hospitality students' criteria in choosing internship placement during the Covid-19 era and to explore what are the student's expectation towards their internship placements during this time.

Criteria in choosing internship placements
Internships programs provide hospitality students with actual learning experience which helps students in understanding the real world of the hospitality industry. Internship originated from the experiential learning model introduced by Plato, a Greek philosopher who stated that knowledge can be gained through practice and reflection (Zopiatis et al., 2021). In 1939, Dewey introduced the Theory of Experience based on Plato's work. While in the hospitality field, Statler, introduced the concept of "hands-on" learning experience to hospitality students which emphasized the concept that gaining practical experience is more meaningful if students are in the industry (Yiu & Law, 2012). The industry plays a crucial role in students' internship, whereby interns' industry supervision contributes to the positive influence in management styles, values, and work norms of future hospitality professionals (Zopiatis & Theocharous, 2013). Internship work environment that provides cooperative, caring and good socialization helps students to be connected during the internship.
Internship placements provide opportunities for students to develop their professionalism and prepare students for their future career. However, factors to be considered when choosing internship placements may vary depending on each student. The criteria can be in terms of intrinsic or extrinsic factors. Extrinsic is associated with monetary values, while intrinsic is more towards satisfaction of psychological needs (Sansone & Harackiewicz, 2000). Behling et al., (1968) indicated that there are various factors that influence prospective employees in choosing a job employer. Prospective employees may choose the job and their future employer based on the three factors: the objective factor, subjective factor and critical contact factor (Behling et al., 1968). Table 1 tabulates the explanation for these factors.

Objective factor
Subjective factor Critical contact factor Source: (Behling et al., 1968) Referring to Table 1, students may regard one of the three factors suggested by Behling et al., (1968) in choosing the internship organizations. One example of the objective factor in job choice criteria is salary and hospitality students are of no exception. Students look for internship placements that can provide them at least an allowance throughout the internship period. This is understandable because students may be far away from their hometown or from the university and sometimes, they accepted internship offers in a totally new place.
Therefore, the need for a temporary place to stay and miscellaneous expenses to pay become inevitable. Hence, these students will opt for internship places that provide allowances, and some would prefer to choose hotels that have staff quarters for trainees. Students may also consider internship places that can provide them with secure job opportunities upon graduation and this is true when these students receive job offers from their previous internship employer (Kwok et al., 2011).
Students are also looking for subjective factors when choosing internship placements and their expectation towards internship supervision from the industry is associated with good supervision, receiving regular feedback on performance and feeling empowered (Bogo, 2015).
Furthermore, past research suggests that if a student receives positive experiences during their internship, it will influence their attitudes towards their future careers (Chen et al., 2011). It was also revealed that internship is a platform for students who are looking forward in gaining industrial experience by working in the actual business setting. This exposure helps students to acquire necessary skills to be effective in the working environment (Yiu & Law, 2012). Zopiatis (2007) and Lam and Ching (2007) described the roles of educational institutions as critical whereby students must be mentally prepared to work in the hospitality industry. For example, students must be informed about the real nature of working in the hotel sector and must be able to cope with the heavy workload and other challenges. Besides, according to Kim and Park (2013), the hospitality school must design, monitor, and manage the internship program so that the receiving industry are prepared to accept and provide proper training to these students without taking advantage of cheap labour. Good networking between the educational institution and the industry is an added advantage as the established collaboration helps to detail out the internship requirements and what the industry can provide for the internship students. Some students may rely on academic institution to find a suitable internship placement. With Covid-19 pandemic affecting many tourism and hospitality players in Malaysia, students have limited options for the internship placements. Thus, these students must be able to adapt and adjust to the current pandemic situation. Moreover, for hospitality students, they have to complete the internship as it is a compulsory course and a requirement for graduation.

Internship during the Covid-19 pandemic
Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) has severely affected the hospitality industry. Despite this, hospitality students need to undergo their internship at hotels and other relevant hospitality organisations to fulfil the curriculum requirements. During internship, hospitality students are exposed to various departments in the hotels such as food and beverage, front office, housekeeping and food production. Hence, internship programs provide opportunities for students to acquire more skills and develop the overall growth of students' potential in the industry. The internships help students experience actual work surroundings where the organization's supervisors are expected to contribute to the overall students' learning process by supervising and sharing their ideas with trainees which indeed makes the process of practicum more interesting (Kukreti & Dani, 2020). For students, internship periods are crucial as it allows them to experience real work life situation on problem solving, assist in building self-confidence and improve communication skills (Jene, 2020).
Dhawan (2020) revealed that Covid-19 affects the students' learning experience whereby learning institutions need to find alternative ways to engage students in the learning experience. It is rather difficult for hospitality students as internship period will provide students with real life industry experience which is not offered during on-campus learning.
The main challenge faced by the students during the Covid-19 period includes internship placements being postponed and sometimes even cancelled which create problems for the students to undergo their practicum. The Covid-19 pandemic has altered how individuals used to go about their daily lives. The pandemic affected educational institutions globally (UNESCO, 2020). Hospitality internships require good communication among the three stakeholders, namely the industry, the educators, and the students. Hence, the interaction within these groups is tremendously affected during the outbreak. As a result, hospitality students who are expected to undergo the internship during the pandemic are badly impacted because of the hotel closures. The educational institutions must find alternative ways during the pandemic, and allowing students with early dismissal from the industry to prepare additional report is seen as appropriate as they were not allowed to finish their internships there.
As evaluation of internship performance is complicated during the pandemic because of early termination by the industry, the weightage for internship appraisals is adjusted depending on cases where students with early dismissal must do additional task given by the university supervisor as they could not complete the six month period at the hotel. Next, rather than practicum presentations being carried out face to face like before the pandemic, students can prepare video presentations and submit via email to report to their supervisors. As suggested by Bosco and Ferns (2014), universities can consider creative assessments in evaluating the students during the special period. Hence, for hospitality students in Universiti Utara Malaysia, the affected students are given additional task to replace internship hours lost, and assist in fulfilling the internship requirements, which therefore allowing students to complete their internships and their study on time. This research is timely as previous research has not focused in securing placements during Covid-19.

METHODOLOGY
This study employed a qualitative method. A qualitative approach is seen as the most appropriate method for this study to achieve the aim of exploring how Covid-19 impacted students who are preparing for their internship. Purposive sampling technique was employed because it is a method that stipulates specific criteria in the sample (Cavana, Delahaye & Sekaran, 2001). The criteria in this study is that respondents have to be hospitality students in UUM who are expected to undergo internship for semester A201. In-depth interviews were conducted with the Bachelor Hospitality Management (BHM) students from July to August 2020 before these students embarked on their actual practicum placement in the industry from 19 October 2020 until 19 April 2021. In-depth interviews allow students to narrate their experiences and provide richer, more useful data compared to questionnaire surveys. The interviews were conducted through Whatsapp voice calls and video calls and the WEBEX meeting platform. From the population of 19 students who went for internship that semester, 19 interviews were conducted as all students agreed to take part in this study. The sample size of 19 students is deemed appropriate as this is when data saturation was achieved. The objectives of this study are to investigate hospitality students' criteria in choosing internship placement during the Covid-19 pandemic and to explore the student's expectation in doing their internship. Hence, the interview was conducted to capture the student's personal perceptions, expectations and issues pertaining to their internship in the new norm. All the information from the interviews gathered were verbatim transcribed, coded and analyzed using thematic analysis.

RESULTS
A total of nineteen BHM students participated in this study, as shown in The students felt that they have difficulties in finding internship placement during the Covid-many hotels had to cease their operations temporarily or permanently (Foo et al., 2020). Thus, many hotel operators were not able to accept trainees for internship during this time.

Theme 2: Limited hands-on experience during the internship
The Covid-19 outbreak provided limited hands-on learning whereby these students described that they may get limited knowledge and experience from the industry compared to before the pandemic. Covid-19 outbreak all over the world has caused tremendous impact not only to businesses but also student's academic experiences. In this case, students undergoing internship were affected because of the pandemic. Difficulties to find internship placement, and the inability to fully experience real world industry work has disrupted the students' real industry working exposure. Aucejo et al., (2020) revealed that thirteen percent of students in one of the public universities in North America had their internship being turned down by the industry because of this pandemic. Similarly, the situation occurred in Malaysia whereby in UUM itself, many students were dismissed early from the internship because of the Covid-19 pandemic. These situations forced academic institutions to provide additional tasks to fulfil the evaluation requirements so that these impacted students can still replace the missing hours which are supposed to be filled with industrial attachment. Covid-19 pandemic has brought difficulties for these students to find a place to fulfil their compulsory internship requirements to graduate. For these students, they did not mind about the allowance paid throughout the six months internship period as long as they are offered a place for the internship. Furthermore, knowing about the current situation happening worldwide, they still have to undergo their internship and willing to accept any internship offers from hotels just to finish their degree.

CONCLUSION
This study provides new insights into hospitality students' internship during the Covid-19 pandemic. The interview method applied enabled the researcher to further probe about the challenges faced by the hospitality students in this difficult time when the Covid-19 outbreak affected everyone across the globe. This research is novel as findings show that due to Covid-19, hospitality students have difficulties in finding internship placements as many hotels were closed. As such, these students are willing to accept any offers from hotels that are still in operation as long as they can fulfil the course requirements and are able to graduate on time.
The findings also revealed that internship students do look for the objective factors when choosing a place for internship. The factors as indicated by Behling et al., (1968) include salary, fringe benefits and others. For internship students, most of them expect hotels to provide allowances throughout the internship period. However, many hotels were not able to do so after hotel businesses were badly hit by the pandemic.
Another important finding is that hospitality students undergoing internship during the Covid-19 pandemic have limited opportunities to fully experience working in a hotel that operates at full capacity with high room occupancy rates. These students knew operational work is limited as there were very few guests patronizing the hotels. The students expressed their concerns of not being able to develop their communication skills especially when interacting with the hotel guests. These students regard global travel ban to curb the spread of the virus as another drawback to the hotel industry. For them, they missed the experience of exposure to the cultural diversity offered by the dynamic hotel industry. The impact of Covid-19 pandemic to humankind is tremendous. The government ordered the closure of all businesses except those providing essential services. The education sector was also hit where all schools and higher education institutions in Malaysia had to be closed and online education replaced the traditional face-to-face teaching. Students doing internship in the hotel sector were dismissed early from the internship when hotels decided to cease their operations. To sustain the economy, government allowed businesses to operate as usual but with stringent SOP. Students admitted they must abide by the SOP, and already accepted the fact that they must undergo the internship in the new normal condition. Students are aware that wearing face masks, washing hands regularly, using hand sanitizer and social distancing are the SOPs that need to be adhered to. The students emphasized the importance of following the SOP so that hotels can operate as usual and they have places for the internship.
The findings from this study can assist the university, especially the department in charge of internship placement to acknowledge the challenges faced by the students going for internship during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is highlighted that the main challenges during Covid-19 is to get an internship placement. Therefore, it is suggested that educational institutions offering hospitality programs to build networking with the hotel operators so a mutual understanding