The faculty and participants of the training programme had a meeting with Dr. Alexis Tam, Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture of Macao SAR Government.
On 29 November, the Global Centre for Tourism Education and Training (hereafter the Centre) organised an eight-day training programme titled “Capacity Building for Destination Marketing & Tourism Development”. It is the fourth time of training held by the Centre, followed by three professional training programmes for representatives from UNWTO Asia-Pacific regions last year and this May. 26 representatives from Independent State of Papua New Guinea, Independent State of Samoa, Republic of Fiji, Republic of Vanuatu, Republic of Maldives, Mainland China and Macao SAR participated in the programme.
On 6 December, the faculty and participants of the training programme had a meeting with Dr. Alexis Tam, Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture of Macao SAR Government. During the meeting, the Secretary recounted that Macao SAR Government and United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Macao in October 2015. The objective was to enhance cooperation between the two parties in improving the quality of human capital and increasing the competitiveness of tourism destinations in order to achieve sustainable tourism development. The Global Centre for Tourism Education and Training, which was officially set up by the Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) in 2016, has organised several training and education programmes for tourism officials and industry representatives in collaboration with UNWTO. He also added that the Macao SAR Government supports and encourages IFT’s Global Centre for Tourism Education to organise more training programmes for different countries, especially those along “One Belt, One Road”. Apart from education and training, he hoped that Macao could further collaborate with “One Belt, One Road” countries and the Greater Bay Area cities for development.
The training programme includes lectures, case studies, experience sharing, presentations and visits. Besides the lectures delivered by IFT professors and scholars, IFT also invited Mr. Andrew Jones, Guardian of Sanctuary Resorts, Immediate Past Chairman (2017) of Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) to share his experiences in regard to sustainable tourism from an industry perspective. In addition, Ms. Celia Lao, CEO of Hong Kong and Macau, AirAsia and a representative of Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute shared their experience in aviation, event and marketing area. The participants also visited the world heritage sites of the Historic Centre of Macao in order to understand the planning and management of tourism facilities in Macao. They also visited a few large scale resort-hotels in Macao, in which Mr. Kris Keminsky, General Manager of Four Seasons Hotel had a sharing session with the participants to share the latest development of the hospitality industry.
Established in 1995, the Institute for Tourism Studies, Macao (IFT) offers the most extensive selection of tourism and hospitality related bachelor degree programmes in Macao, and about twenty thousand participants attend its vocational and professional training courses annually. IFT collaborates with 104 universities and tourism organisations around the world, and builds strong links with 500 leading tourism and hospitality corporations to offer internship opportunities to its students. Being the first institution accredited by the UNWTO.TedQual Certification System for tourism education, IFT has now 8 bachelor degree programmes with the Certification. Currently, the Institute has the most number of bachelor degree programmes certified under the System of any tertiary education establishment worldwide. In 2017, IFT became the world’s first higher education institution to pass International Quality Review(IQR) from the UK's Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). IFT has been ranked by the “QS World University Rankings by Subject 2017” as the 2nd best higher education institution in Asia in the field of hospitality and leisure management and the 18th best higher education institution in this field in the world. In addition, IFT has received the Medal of Merit in Tourism from the Macao SAR Government, and won twice the Gold Award in ‘Education and Training’ from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA).