An Exploratory Analysis of Soft Skill Competencies Needed for the Hospitality Industry

The identification of competencies needed by hospitality managers has been investigated since the 1980s. In all of the competency research related to management, essential competencies include skills that can be classified as soft skills. The purpose of this project was to have human resource professionals rate the importance of soft skill competencies found in literature and to determine the relative importance of the seven categories of soft skill competencies. The study combined new data with existing data to complete an exploratory factor analysis. This exploratory study found a five-component tool that had similarities to other models found in the literature review but also had unique differences to the prior research.