* Corresponding author. E-mail address: hotuanvu2007@gmail.com (H.T. Vu) © 2020 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada doi: 10.5267/j.msl.2020.5.003 Management Science Letters 10 (2020) 3183–3188 Contents lists available at GrowingScience Management Science Letters homepage: www.GrowingScience.com/msl Factors affecting the career choice of students in tourism: Evidence from Danang city, Vietnam Ho Tuan Vu a* a Faculty of Accounting, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, 550000, Vietnam; Institute of Research and Development, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, 550000, Vietnam C H R O N I C L E A B S T R A C T Article history: Received: March 3, 2020 Received in revised format: March 25 2020 Accepted: May 2, 2020 Available online: May 3, 2020 The purpose of this research was to determine the factors affecting the career choice of students in Tourism in Danang City, Vietnam. The survey adopted some questionnaire from the existing liter- ature, distributed among 350 randomly chosen participants and managed to collect 300 properly filled ones. Cronbach’s Alphas were well above the desirable level and confirmed the overall sur- vey. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was implemented to reduce the important factors into six groups and multiple regression analysis (MRA) was executed in order to measure the effects of each group on the career choice. The survey results show that the career choice of students in Tour- ism was due to career opportunities, belief in self-capacity, culture, intellect and the imposition of others. © 2020 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada Keywords: Career choice Students Tourism Danang Vietnam 1. Introduction Danang is a tourist city of Vietnam. The city is a popular tourist destination and has many unique tourist activities. The quality of tourism’s staff is the main reason for attracting many people. According to a forecast accomplished in 2020, Da Nang will welcome 8.5 million visitors, including 2.5 million international visitors, 6 million domestic visitors and the demand for direct tourism labor will reach 35,289. In particular, the accommodation industry in 2020 will increase to 26,000 rooms, 62,000 rooms are forecasted in 2030 and will require 65,000 to 70,000 employees for the trained hotel industry. This shows that the demand for training at educational institutions is extremely urgent. There were many researches on the career choice of students as well as factors affecting the career choice of students. Some researches on the career choice of students and factors affecting the career choice of students were performed by Chapman (1981), Paolillo and Estes (1982), Oanh (1996), Auyeung and Sands (1997), Borchert (2002), Qui and Thi (2009). However, there had not been any research on factors affect- ing the career choice of students in Tourism in Danang City, Vietnam. Therefore, this study will focus on the career choice of students in Tourism as well as factors affecting them in Danang City, Vietnam. 2. Literature Review 2.1. The career choice of students According to Borchert (2002) there are three main elements affecting the choice of career including environment, opportunity and personal characteristics, and personal characteristics maintains the highest importance for choosing the job of students of high school. Tang et al. (2008) used the model of career society development theory (Felton et al., 1994) surveying factors affecting the work choice trend of the students of high school. This research pointed out that the studied knowledge, self-