Tourism education plays a key role in tourism and hospitality management education with emphasis on developing students’ managerial, rather than operational skills (Roberts and Whitelaw, 1999). Combination of theory with practice is viewed as an essential component of tourism and hospitality management education. Industrial training component of tourism and education can hold real educational benefits in preparing students for future management roles. Given the proliferation of tourism and hospitality related courses over the past decade and the relative importance attributed to industrial training in developing students’ management competencies. This research undertakes an empirical study to find the enhancement in competencies experienced by students after their industrial training. The study also attempts to find out the effectiveness of the industrial training underwent by the hospitality and tourism students. Further this study attempts to identify the relationship between the enhancement of the competencies and effectiveness of the industrial training. For the study purpose three institutions offering tourism and hospitality education in Jammu namely Center for Hospitality and Tourism Management, Satyam Institute of Hotel Management & Tourism; and Travel and Tourism branch of Government Polytechnic College Jammu has been taken into consideration. This study highlights the importance of industrial training in tourism education.

Keywords : Industrial training, competencies, training effectiveness and tourism education.