Ecuador: The Next Generation Travel Professionals (paramedics)
No commentsBy Peter Lauffer
Very often I hear about new tourism related businesses who open their doors somewhere in the country. The various careers in tourism who can be studied at the local universities are in very high demand by students, who just finished their college.
In Ecuador, tourism is often considered an easy way to earn money. For this reason, new tourism businesses are created carefree and its owners seem to have excellent intentions at the beginning.
Because Ecuadorians are excellent hosts, most people think that to receive a foreign visitor is the same easy thing as to receive a good friend. Unfortunately is this perception not always right.
Sad to say that the very low level of education, combined with a practically non existing quality control from the authorities, let fail a lot of the newly created businesses. This situation often leaves disappointed investors alone with a big whole in their finances.
Too much amateurism is reigning in Ecuador’s touristic education. Beginning with the universities who teach tourism careers without any practical knowledge from the sector. There are different tourism careers available, but there are no studies about how many professionals are needed in each career.
The reality today is that a graduated has a title in tourism, but has in fact very little technical and practical knowledge about his profession. As an example, how can it be explained that in Ecuador students have to learn 2 foreign languages at the same time, often instructed by teachers who don’t even have a diploma in the language they instruct.
After graduation, the universities leave their students very often without the foreign language skills needed to start successful a career.
Other educational problems occur because most of the teachers have never worked in tourism, and most of them don’t even have the necessary contacts who would help them to know what the expectations from the industry and their employers are.
Another deficiency is that there are no controls of the graduation process itself, that means the final “tests” are controlled totally by the universities themselves. The instructors of each discipline “test” their own students.
This process opens doors for corruption and there is absolutely no control in which quality and quantity the tested knowledge was transmitted to the student.
This inadequate education in tourism has not only the effect that lots of graduates don’t find a study related job after they have their diploma, it is often a frustration for their family too.
The family often invests a lot of money in the academic work of their child, in the meaning that he or she should have a better life afterwords. If the graduated does’t find a job in his career, the family is often very disappointed because years of saved money seems to be invested badly.
The practical part of a career should be learned in a well coordinated and organized training in career related businesses. Business owners should be motivated to employ trainees, and to take the time to introduce them to the practical part of their career.
There should be exact plans for every trainee what to do in a company, depending on the level of their studies. The practical work should be, of course, part of the final qualification.
A nice side effect for the participating company would be to have an interesting possibility to pre-select future employees.
For the Ecuadorian tourism industry should it be a priority to ensure an excellent education for future professionals.
Only this way the tourism in Ecuador can have a healthy growth in future.
More and more good trained young people have to be involved in our interesting industry. They help to ensure an excellent reputation of Ecuador in the world and ensure an excellent standard of living for themselves and all of us.
Peter Lauffer, General Manager of TrueColors
Travel in Quito - Your Expert Guide for Galapagos Cruise Travel at www.galapagostraveller.com
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How to Know When you are Going to Get Fired
By Musa Aykac
Although no one wants to get fired from there office job, the inevitable may always happen one day or another. So to be on the safe side, here are a few hints which may show you a small sign that the management is unhappy with you, and you never know you might be able to turn it around and keep your job.
Stop Turning up Late for Work
Firstly if you are late for work on the odd occasion, then that is understandable. We have all been stuck in traffic jams before, or have experienced public transport being cancelled. But when you start turning up late for work every single day, then you are probably asking for trouble. The first signs that people are unhappy with you would probably be in the form of ignoring you, once you start walking in to the office and everything goes silent and not even a mention of “good morning”, then you know the wind is blowing in the wrong direction.
I Can’t Believe you Did That!
If you are constantly making mistakes at work then you will definitely be heading for the door, nobody wants to employ someone that will act in such a way with there clients. There are two sides of this though, the first being where you keep making small mistakes and the second on where you have made one major mistake, which may well end up in instant dismissal.
Do Your Work and Shut up!
If you are one of these people that constantly have to talk, then there is probably a big chance that you are under achieving on the work side of things. Directors of the company are not usually allocated in the same room as the employees; therefore if you get called into the meeting room, you sure know that one of your colleagues has had enough of your voice.
Stop Turning the Office into a Play Area
Chucking things around the room, constantly singing and reading magazines is a sure way to get the boot. The office is a work area and not a play area so treat it that way; if you get caught playing around then it could also be a form of instant dismissal.
So finally if you think that any of the above applies to you, you may want to try to turn things round before you end up losing your job. The safest thing to do would ideally be, to sit on your office chair and work, in the end that is what you are paid to do.
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Sunday, October 26th, 2008 at 12:05 am and is filed under careers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
