Virtual internships in hospitality management education : complexities and possibilities

Through interactive technologies, virtual internships provide students with supervised opportunities to apply their academic knowledge. Virtual internships represent an underserved and emerging space for conceptual and practical enquiry. Drawing from key stakeholder perspectives, this chapter explores the contribution of virtual internships to the employability of hospitality management students. The benefits and challenges of virtual internships are examined. The salience of this research is amplified by the economic and societal impacts emanating from the COVID-19 pandemic. In the face of pandemic-induced lockdowns, universities converted face-to-face learning and teaching online. This pivot was particularly challenging from a work-integrated learning (WIL) perspective. Students completing internships were required to retreat from the office to the online sphere or their internships and experiential learning opportunities ended abruptly; the significance of which induced the chapter focus.