Despite the sufficient number of educational institutions that train specialists in this field, one of the acute problems in the Russian tourism industry is the lack of qualified personnel. Theoretical understanding of this problem has been a particularly active area of research in recent post-pandemic years. An increasing number of studies have been devoted to highlighting the life orientations of modern youth, as well as the role of educational organisations in professional training, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the causes and factors of personnel shortages in the tourism industry. The empirical problems were solved using an author's questionnaire created with Yandex Forms. The interviewees were second- and third-year Tourism and Hospitality students at the Naberezhnye Chelny branch of Kazan Innovation University College of Professional Education. The author's research revealed some aspects of the problem of training personnel for the tourism industry in the Republic of Tatarstan by identifying the educational and professional interests of college students specialising in this field. The extremely low proportion of graduates employed in the tourism sector was confirmed. The necessity of creating an effective, professional learning environment within educational institutions to maintain students' motivation to work in the tourism industry was substantiated. The negative impact of the revealed attitude on the short-term planning of educational and professional orientations for college students was determined. The research conducted supplemented our understanding of the causes and factors of the shortage of personnel in the tourism industry in the regions and in Russia as a whole.