This study explores how tourism graduates in Inner Mongolia experience the transition from university to the workplace and how industry practitioners interpret these early career challenges in a culturally diverse tourism context.
Using a comparative qualitative design, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with 16 recent tourism graduates and a focus group with seven tourism practitioners. Data were analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis and interpreted using a Transition Shock-Transformative Learning (TSTL) framework.
Transition shock was associated with emotional strain, role uncertainty, limited practical and digital readiness, and difficulties in cultural mediation and heritage storytelling. These pressures were intensified by weak internship design and the absence of structured reflective support. Graduates were more likely to move towards confidence, perspective revision and professional identity formation when mentorship, guided reflection and closer university-industry collaboration were present.
Tourism programs should strengthen reflective internship design, mentorship-based support and culturally grounded learning, while integrating digital readiness, crisis response and heritage interpretation more systematically into curriculum design.
The study contributes to higher education and work-based learning scholarship by showing that graduate transition is not only a skills issue but also a culturally mediated and emotionally shaped process. The TSTL framework offers a context-sensitive explanation of how early disruption may lead either to disengagement or to professional development.
