Tourism re­mains one of the key pil­lars of this coun­try’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine con­tin­ues to play a piv­otal role in this re­gard­ing through ed­u­ca­tion, as it con­tin­ues to en­cour­age peo­ple to en­gage in this field of study, says Dr Acol­la Cameron, dean of the Fac­ul­ty of So­cial Sci­ences and se­nior lec­tur­er in tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty man­age­ment at the Fac­ul­ty of So­cial Sci­ences, UWI St Au­gus­tine.

Cameron told the Sun­day Busi­ness that with a rich cul­tur­al her­itage, stun­ning nat­ur­al land­scapes, and a vi­brant hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try, T&T pro­vides an ide­al back­drop for stu­dents to ex­plore this di­verse and dy­nam­ic field.

To sup­port this dri­ve, she not­ed that tourism ar­rivals have been in­creas­ing over the past few years in this coun­try, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO).

In 2021, there were 41,091 tourist ar­rivals, in 2022, the num­ber climbed to 227,403 and 2023 it was at 310,237.

In this vein, Cameron en­cour­aged em­brac­ing tourism as a field of study that opens up a pletho­ra of op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“En­rich­ing lives, con­nect­ing peo­ple and fos­ter­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, tourism is not on­ly vi­tal for this coun­try’s econ­o­my, but al­so for its cul­tur­al her­itage and nat­ur­al land­scapes.

“The growth of this in­dus­try is vi­tal and it is there­fore, crit­i­cal that we have per­sons with ex­per­tise and knowl­edge to dri­ve the sec­tor for­ward. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ca­pac­i­ty build­ing is cru­cial and it en­sures that we have per­sons who are skilled and trained with the right ex­pe­ri­ences to de­vel­op the sec­tor sus­tain­ably,” she ex­plained.

Stat­ing that UWI re­mains one of the main in­sti­tu­tions that has been teach­ing, train­ing and equip­ping peo­ple with knowl­edge in the tourism sec­tor for over 20 years, Cameron de­scribed the in­sti­tu­tion as not just pro­vid­ing hu­man re­sources for the tourism in­dus­try in T&T but the re­gion as well.

She said UWI of­fers a num­ber of tourism de­grees in­clu­sive of a mi­nor in tourism at the un­der­grad­u­ate lev­el; a BSc In­ter­na­tion­al Tourism Man­age­ment; a post-grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Tourism De­vel­op­ment and Man­age­ment; and a Mas­ters De­gree in Tourism De­vel­op­ment and Man­age­ment.

Cameron fur­ther iden­ti­fied three top ways in which tourism stud­ies can pos­i­tive­ly in­flu­ence ca­reer de­vel­op­ment:

In­dus­try in­sights and trends: Through course­work, projects, in­tern­ships, and in­dus­try in­ter­ac­tions, stu­dents gain in­sights in­to cur­rent in­dus­try trends, emerg­ing is­sues, and best prac­tices in tourism man­age­ment, mar­ket­ing, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and des­ti­na­tion de­vel­op­ment.

Prac­ti­cal skills de­vel­op­ment: Tourism stud­ies fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing prac­ti­cal skills that are es­sen­tial for suc­cess in the work­place, in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion, cus­tomer ser­vice, prob­lem-solv­ing, lead­er­ship, team­work, and project man­age­ment. These skills are high­ly trans­fer­able and ap­plic­a­ble to a wide range of roles with­in the tourism in­dus­try, as well as in oth­er sec­tors.

Hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence: Many tourism pro­grammes of­fer hands-on learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties such as in­tern­ships, field trips, case stud­ies and ex­pe­ri­en­tial learn­ing projects that al­low stu­dents to ap­ply their knowl­edge and skills in re­al-world set­tings. This prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence en­hances stu­dents’ em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty, con­fi­dence and readi­ness for the work­force.

Over­all, Cameron said, study­ing tourism can have a trans­for­ma­tive im­pact on one’s ca­reer by pro­vid­ing the knowl­edge, skills, ex­pe­ri­ences and con­nec­tions need­ed to suc­ceed in the dy­nam­ic and di­verse field.

Over the years, she added UWI has pro­duced peo­ple who con­tin­ue to make cred­itable achieve­ments at var­i­ous lev­els.

For in­stance, An­dia Ravariere who grad­u­at­ed in 2015 with a Mas­ters in Tourism De­vel­op­ment and Man­age­ment, and start­ed her ca­reer in tourism de­vel­op­ment. She had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work along­side the tourism con­sul­tant as an in­tern at the Min­istry of Tourism in An­guil­la.

A few years lat­er, she se­cured the role of tourism re­search of­fi­cer but was heav­i­ly in­volved in tourism plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment and de­vel­op­ing com­pre­hen­sive tourism projects.

In that ca­pac­i­ty, she suc­cess­ful­ly led a project ex­plor­ing sport tourism de­vel­op­ment and from there went on to lead the de­vel­op­ment of An­guil­la’s Wells, a her­itage tourism project.

In shar­ing in­sights of how her work in tourism has im­pact her life, Ravariere said, “My pas­sion for des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing beamed and in 2024 the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther prove my ca­pa­bil­i­ties and skills as a des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­al, be­came avail­able. I suc­cess­ful­ly se­cured the role of des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at Dis­cov­er Do­mini­ca Au­thor­i­ty.

“As a Do­mini­can by birth, I am lov­ing every sec­ond of be­ing able to use tourism as a ve­hi­cle to con­tribute to the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of my coun­try. Study­ing tourism changed my ca­reer path. I strong­ly be­lieve the op­por­tu­ni­ties in trav­el and tourism field are end­less.”

Mean­while, Ja­son Radix, tour guide and busi­ness­man, is a for­mer UWI tourism man­age­ment un­der­grad and post-grad­u­ate stu­dent who present­ly owns Eu­re­ka Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Tours in To­ba­go, which was es­tab­lished in 2015.

In shar­ing this ex­pe­ri­ence said he be­gan his ca­reer as a guide at the Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre in Trinidad, al­so serv­ing as op­er­a­tions man­ag­er at To­ba­go’s Blue Wa­ters Inn, and as an ad­junct ac­com­mo­da­tions lec­tur­er at the To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute.

“My un­bro­ken 33-year ca­reer has made me a suc­cess­ful and pas­sion­ate ser­vice provider. Com­bined with this were my stud­ies at the UWI which equipped me with de­tailed knowl­edge of the tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try, and the many lay­ers of train­ing re­quired to­wards hav­ing a sus­tain­able suc­cess­ful busi­ness and ca­reer,” Radix added.

For Wen­del Pe­tit af­ter serv­ing as a tax of­fi­cer in the Gov­ern­ment over 15 years, he de­cid­ed to delve in­to the world of tourism and is now the hu­man re­sources di­rec­tor at Car­ni­val Cruise Lines.

Hav­ing pur­sued a de­gree in in­ter­na­tion­al tourism man­age­ment at UWI, part of Pe­tit’s course man­age­ment plan­ning was to on­ly pur­sue man­age­ment elec­tives. How­ev­er, to en­sure he re­mained em­ploy­able out­side of the tourism sec­tor and al­so to fa­cil­i­tate and fos­ter changes in man­age­ment styles, he made use of the ca­reer man­age­ment dis­cus­sions with Cameron who as­sist­ed him in se­cur­ing an in­tern­ship with the hu­man re­sources and com­mu­ni­ca­tion teams at San­dals Re­sorts.

In giv­ing ad­vice to those who want to pur­sue tourism, Pe­tit said, “There are so many ad­van­tages to be gained from pur­su­ing this course of study. Take time to do your re­search and make the ef­fort to ex­cel at your stud­ies. Use your cre­ativ­i­ty and know you can ac­tu­al­ly make a dif­fer­ence.”

The UWI pro­gramme al­so pre­pared Naren­dra Ramgu­lam, ad­junct UWI lec­tur­er and con­sul­tant, with the tools for suc­cess.

“Tourism as a field of study pre­pared me for many ex­pe­ri­ences in the in­dus­try which led my ca­reer across a num­ber of its sub­sec­tors, rang­ing from op­por­tu­ni­ties to work with the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Black Ho­tel Own­ers, Op­er­a­tors and De­vel­op­ers (NAB­HOO); lec­tur­ing/teach­ing the sub­ject mat­ter at a num­ber of schools; as­sum­ing the po­si­tion as di­rec­tor prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and des­ti­na­tion man­age­ment with the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd and open­ing my own con­sul­tan­cy busi­ness in the field of tourism,” he said.

Ex­ec­u­tive as­sis­tant at Trinidad Tourism Ltd, Lori-Ann Pol­lard, who did the MSc Tourism De­vel­op­ment and Man­age­ment pro­gramme at UWI, re­lat­ed that one of her most en­rich­ing ex­pe­ri­ences was par­tic­i­pat­ing in a stu­dent ex­change in Eu­rope.

“This eye-open­ing trav­el ex­pe­ri­ence not on­ly broad­ened my cul­tur­al hori­zons but al­so re­vealed the vast pos­si­bil­i­ties and op­por­tu­ni­ties for tourism de­vel­op­ment in T&T and the wider Caribbean re­gion,” she said.

To cur­rent and prospec­tive stu­dents, Pol­lard en­cour­aged them not to be lim­it­ed by the per­ceived chal­lenges of se­cur­ing a “tourism-based job.”

“The in­dus­try of­fers an ar­ray of op­por­tu­ni­ties for those will­ing to vol­un­teer, en­gage with the pri­vate sec­tor, and hone their en­tre­pre­neur­ial skills. Em­brace the jour­ney, stay pas­sion­ate, and let your ex­pe­ri­ences guide you to­ward mak­ing a last­ing im­pact on the in­dus­try we all love,” she added.