As a tourism professional, which part of the above statement holds more significance for you? As a ticketing officer, you would be anxious about not having enough seats to sell to your clients, but as a product planner, would you be looking forward to a possible decrease or increase in airfares?
In-house trainer Keong approaches each subject from a macro perspective, motivating students to look at every issue from both sides, for a complete view of the situations which affect the industry today. A firm advocate of the "teach a man to fish" approach, he believes that a complete understanding of the subject involves not force-feeding facts, figures and principles, but rather an indepth comprehension of how these facts, figures and principles are derived; this is a technique which he has found more useful to students in understanding and retaining basic concepts.
Tutorials are deliberately casual encounters conducted in smaller groups. Students are encouraged to share their understanding of lecture material together with their own working life experiences. There are no wrong answers, so there is no cause for embarassment. In this informal setting, students can open up freely and gain more from the prescribed information, as well as discovery of each individual's grasp of the material.
About the Trainer: Keong graduated from Glasgow Caledonian University in 1998 with a bachelors degree in Tourism Management. From 1991 to present day, he has been working in the tourism and hospitality industry in Singapore, covering tourist attractions, a hotel and a travel agency. Drawing from varied experiences in each of these sectors, he has amassed a repository of behind-the-scenes knowledge of how the tourism industry works. Keong looks forward to sharing this information with future generations of frontline tourism professionals especially in this island state, which is largely dependent on this industry. He believes that a sustainable career in tourism and hospitality stems from a realistic evalution of how each individual student's personal skill-sets, personality and flexibility can be matched to the industry.
Keong also conducts computer appreciation classes and beginners English classes for community groups.
