Luis Mota, Ph.D. gave his lecture and share(d) his experience in the opportunities and challenges of tourism and hospitality education with the students of YSU faculty of Engineering at the department of hospitality, fashion and beauty theraphy on Friday, February 6th 2015. Luis Mota is an EXPERTS4 Asia Post Doc awardee whose expertise is in Tourism and Hospitality Education. In his presentation, Luis Mota focused on the relationship between human resource quality improvement and tourism development.
“Indonesia is a good example for human resource quality development which is tourism oriented,” Luis explained. “The 1988 ecotourism project in Mount Rinjani, Lombok is a good example. The national park management was successful to develop the local potential through hospitality business training for the community. The managerial officials were also able to build a good relationship with the community so that they could serve as information center for visitors,” said the Ph.D. holder from University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Once a diving instructor at University of Erlangen, Germany, he also explored on how Balinese government has effectively improved the worker’s capacity through the “Bali Shark” project. “Starting from 2011, many NGOs in Bali have committed to provide community education about the significance of shark’s population to the sea ecosystem and protection. “The sharks are protected and their presence in the area is one of the adventurous tourism fascinations in Bali. Visitors can interact with the sharks while diving,” he elaborated.
Explaining another project conducted in Sumatra, he added that the Batik project has empowered women to produce Batik based on the characteristics and identity of each region. It has also provide a new way of promoting Batik to the public. The participants were also given English and other foreign language trainings to boost the selling.
“The emphasize is on the collaboration with the ministry of manpower in formulating the urgent needs of the human resource sector to improve the labour skills.” Luis ended.