Digital Competence of Hospitality Students within the Context of Information and Communication Technology Environment

In the nearest future, most industries, including hospitality, will be characterized by significant changes linked to the change of business models, leaders break through innovations due to the new global epidemiological situation. Considering the new digitization trends in the hospitality industry, only companies with employees with high-level digital competence will be able to survive, adapt and develop. The dual study environment of a higher education institution ‒ the study environment of a higher education institution and the environment of professional activities plays a major role in the development of digital competence. On the basis of the ecological approach, there has been the context of information and communication technology environment viewed in the article within the substantiation of digital competence. The aim of the study was: during the pedagogical experiment to approbate the developed “Model of the dual study environment of a higher education institution” and to evaluate university hospitality students’ competitiveness including digital competence as competitiveness integral part. To find out how significantly has changed the self-evaluation of students’ digital competence after the prospective hospitality business managers’ competitiveness facilitation in the framework of the developed dual study environmental model. Both before and after the pedagogical experiment the students performed the self-evaluation of digital competence by using the authors’ developed and examined competitiveness evaluation methodology. The obtained results testify that the developed and approbated model for promotion of competitiveness development in general impacted self-assessments of the students' digital competence during the pedagogical experiment.