Zeitschrift für Wirtschaft und Hotelmanagement

Personality Traits and Tourism- Hospitality and Tourism Management

Yekinni Ojo Bello

Abstract 
Purpose: This paper examined the  relationship  between  the big five personality traits and tourism-preneurship tendency of undergraduate students of hospitality and tourism management, University of Port Harcourt. 
Research Design: The study used a structured questionnaire hence, a quantitative research design. 
Methodology: Multiple regressions analysis that allow the exploration of the interrelationship among set of variables were adopted for the analysis of data collected. 
Approach: The researchers carefully screen the data in terms of missing values, influential outliers, normality, and multicollinearity using statistical package for social science (SPSS) software version 23 before proceeding with the analysis. 
Findings: The result shows that there is positive and significant correlation between the five dimensions of personality traits and tourism-prenueuriship tendency (TPI) in respect to hospitality and tourism management undergraduate  students,  University  of Port Harcourt, Nigeria except for openness to experiences. Result further validates the proposed big-five personality traits and tourism-preneurship tendency model for hospitality and tourism management undergraduate students of the University of Port Harcourt. It also confirms contentiousness has making the strongest unique contribution to  tourism-preneurship tendency of hospitality and tourism management undergraduate students, University of Port Harcourt, Choba, Nigeria. 
Originality of the Research: This study  contributed  to  the body of knowledge in the tourism domain by authenticating the usage of the big five personality traits for predicting tourism- entrepreneurship tendency of hospitality and tourism management students in an emerging economy. Overall, this research contributes in knowledge of university student’s personality traits and their relations with tourism-entrepreneurship intention.  It  fills the gap of limited empirical studies on entrepreneurship and tourism management in emerging economies. 
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