Students attend hospitality expo

By JACKLYN SIRIAS
THE hospitality expo in Port Moresby helped schools expose their students to the tourism industry and what they can gain from it.
Laloki Secondary School teacher Daisy Koran and her 30 grade 11 and 12 tourism students were invited by the Papua New Guinea Tourism Industry Association (TIA) to participate in the expo in Port Moresby.
Koran said that the expo helped the students gain better understanding of the industry and know what to expect when they leave school.
“Tourism was a new course that was recently introduced in schools,” Koran said.
She said they did not have enough materials to teach tourism and hospitality. “So on such occasions like this, it gives us an opportunity to come out to collect brochures and pamphlets as they contain information on which the students will need to know the type of services the industry provides, what kind of facilities are involved, and so forth,” she said.
Koran said the information gained and the pamphlets provided would help the school teach tourism courses as there were no textbooks available yet.
“This is actually the first time for my students to participate in such an expo and we are hoping more of such future events would be conducted, not only in tourism but on other subjects and trades too,” Koran added.
Meanwhile, three of her grade 11 students – Tracy Kila, Brenda Kaki and Natasha Paulon – said that initially their understanding of tourism and hospitality was that they had to do with food and cooking.
“But when we attend this event, we found out that the tourism and hospitality industry is a broad industry that covers a lot of things from cooking to arts and craft to tourists and the type of hospitality services and so forth,” they said.
Kaki said they learnt so much at the various stalls in the expo.
“We should have a lot of such events to assist us with studies as today we came with questions and assignments which we are hoping the expo will help to us to answer them,” Paulon said.