Demographic Factors that affect the Entreprenuership Intentions of Students in Tourism Department: Comparison of Two State Universities

Recently, entreprenuership is one of the most important subjects. Because most countries are aware that they can achieve economic development and growth by the help of entreprenuership. Therefore, these countries try to create tangible and intangible opportunities that would unfold entreprenuership potential. Turkey needs entreprenuers in tourism sector. It is important for Turkey to lead their students who studies in tourism department to entreprenuership because of abundance in touristic destinations and labor-intensive characteristics of the tourism sector. In this study, entreprenuership intentions of students in tourism departments at Afyon Kocatepe University and Trakya University are compared, and similarities and differences in students’ entreprenuership intentions are put forth. For this purpose, Cronbach Alpha is used to test the reliability of the study, and Kruskal Wallis analysis is conducted to test the impact of demographic factors on the entreprenuership intentions of students. The similarities of demographic factors that affect the students’ entreprenuership intentions of both universities are seen on the same age groups and same objectives (establishing their own businesses, not considering to work in state agencies), and differences are observed in terms of gender and grades (semester). One of the important findings of the study is that entreprenuership education at Trakya University affected the entreprenuership intentions of the students partially and for a short period of time.