Tourism curricula, entrepreneurial engagement and stakeholders’ satisfaction: economics and relationship marketing of universities

Today universities face a very competitive arena and the stakeholders’ engagement and satisfaction, they are both essential in order to gain and consolidate the competitive advantage. The entrepreneurial engagement involves, first of all, work placements. The entrepreneurial engagement and satisfaction can be investigated through questionnaires, interviews and, if the satisfaction is high, the advocacy for the university can imply sponsorships and partnerships for research. Relationship Marketing becomes a priority in order to manage relationships with stakeholders and to create a competitive edge for the university. The entrepreneurial engagement is evident in all above-mentioned practices in tourism curricula in the Italian university. The aim of the paper is cluster analysis of satisfaction of 100 entrepreneurs of the tourism industry who supplied stages for a Milan University students in 2013 and 2014. These entrepreneurs replied to questionnaires, so that they revealed their satisfaction for students. K-means clustering gave evidence to the diversification of the supply chain and to entrepreneurs’ satisfaction about students’ knowledge, relationship skills, willingness-to-learn and overall satisfaction. The most crowded cluster includes hotels, travel agencies, administrations and not-for-profits. This cluster signals the highest satisfaction of work placement-tutors.