Top national training award for Kangan Batman TAFE Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Department
12 September 2003
Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Department teachers.
Kangan Batman TAFE’s Hospitality, Travel and Tourism Department has won a national award recognising the quality of its training programs and teaching staff.
The department won the 2003 Outstanding Group Contribution to Tourism and Hospitality Training Award, presented by Tourism Training Australia (TTA). This was one of only four awards in the national TTA Tourism and Hospitality Trainers’ Awards, which were presented in Perth on 4 September 2003.
Based at Kangan Batman TAFE’s main Broadmeadows campus, the Hospitality, Travel and Tourism Department offers training in travel and tourism, hospitality, cookery, food production and food safety.
The department won the award mainly for its unique teaching approach in its tourism and hospitality advanced diplomas, which focuses on developing the students’ entrepreneurial and business skills.
The training program is based around intensive preparation of the students to enter the State Government’s Tourism Student Business Initiative (TSBI), a competition which requires students to develop business plans for viable tourism business ideas.
The department’s teaching strategy, which includes an industry guest speaker lecture series and research study-tour for the students, has helped numerous students win the top awards in the prestigious TSBI.
Kangan Batman TAFE students first entered the competition in 1999, when the teachers made entry compulsory as part of the curriculum for final year tourism and hospitality advanced diploma students.
Since then, Kangan Batman TAFE students have won the majority of the competition’s six prizes every time, beating students from universities and TAFEs all over Victoria.
Kangan Batman TAFE students’ TSBI prizes:
- 1999 – 1st prize ($8,000 overseas study tour), 2nd, 3rd and 4th places.
- 2000 – 1st prize ($8,000 overseas study tour), 3rd and 5th places.
- 2001 – 2nd, 5th and 6th places.
- 2002 – 2nd, 3rd and 4th places, and a Special Commendation.
As the TSBI did not run in 2003, the Hospitality, Travel and Tourism Department successfully applied for Commonwealth Government funding to conduct its own business plan competition.
The funding has been provided through the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources as part of the National Innovation Awareness Strategy's Promoting Young Entrepreneurs Initiative, a national scheme that aims to promote entrepreneurial activity in Australia.
The Kangan Batman TAFE Business Plan Competition has been based on the TSBI, so there has been no change to the teaching strategy. The competition will be judged externally by judges from Tourism Training Victoria, Tourism Victoria and the industry.
First prize is $4,000, second prize is $1,500, and third prize is $750. Prizes are to be taken as travel, to expand the students’ industry knowledge. Winners will be announced in November 2003.
“Having produced so many award-winning graduates, it’s great that our teaching staff have now been recognised with an award of their own from Tourism Training Australia,” said Christine Pontin, Manager of Kangan Batman TAFE’s Hospitality, Travel and Tourism Department.
“We may not be as large or as well-known as some other hospitality and tourism training providers, but this award recognises that small is often better when it comes to training, as we can give our students more one-on-one attention.”
“Our tourism graduates are snapped up by the industry, because of the experience and knowledge we give them during the course. They learn what it takes to operate a successful tourism business through a study-tour and guest speaker lecture series, where they visit and meet business operators. We also offer an overseas study-tour to broaden the students’ experience of travel, and the students even stage their own travel expo.”
