Students' perceptions of quality and satisfaction with virtual field trips of hotels

This paper examines hotel management students' perceptions of the quality aspects of a Virtual Field Trip (VFT) technology based learning and teaching tool, and its effect on their satisfaction. With the help of an online VFT tool, students were familiarized with the theoretical concepts of hotel operations, and then exposed to the insights of the actual operations of two hotels. To assess satisfaction, 182 undergraduate students in a large public university in Australia responded to a self-administered questionnaire. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, principle component factor analysis and multiple regression techniques. The results suggest that there are three factors of quality promoting students' satisfaction, however, the factor of 'system quality' was found to be the most important predictor for satisfaction when using the technology based learning and teaching tool. Further analysis revealed that international students' satisfaction with the factor of 'content quality' was higher than domestic students.