Dr. Muna Slehat participated in the 16th Global Islamic Marketing Conference in Alanya, Turkey, where she presented her paper titled “The Role of GenAI Technologies to Support Competencies for Tourism Management Based on Sandwith’s Model: Undergraduates’ Perceptions of the Benefits and Challenges.” In her presentation, she discussed the role of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in supporting competency development for Tourism Management undergraduates, based on Sandwith’s Competency Domain Model.
During her participation, she explained that the study addresses a growing need to understand how GenAI can enhance learning in applied disciplines such as Tourism Management, which requires a balanced set of conceptual, interpersonal, administrative, and technical skills. She noted that the research explored students’ perceptions of the benefits of GenAI tools in developing domain-specific competencies, while also identifying the key challenges students face when using GenAI as a learning aid.
Dr. Slehat highlighted that the study adopted a quantitative approach using a structured questionnaire administered to a purposive sample of Tourism Management undergraduate students from four public universities in Jordan. The findings revealed strong student agreement that GenAI tools contribute to strengthening competencies across all domains, with the technical domain receiving the highest evaluations, followed by the conceptual and administrative domains. Students emphasized GenAI’s value in providing personalized learning support, enhancing creativity and strategic thinking, and supporting decision-making in real time.
At the same time, she discussed several challenges reported by students, including internet connectivity, the need to verify the accuracy of AI-generated content, and the limited relevance of some generated outputs to local tourism topics. She concluded by emphasizing the importance of strategically integrating GenAI tools into Tourism Management curricula to enhance students’ competencies and readiness for the evolving demands of the tourism industry.