IFTM has been honoured with a prestigious PATA Gold Award for a fourth time in the category Human Capital Development Initiative, announced today (7 October). The award from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) is for the Institute’s decade-long effort in promoting entrepreneurship in the field of tourism and hospitality.
The latest accolade acknowledges IFTM’s leading role in stimulating enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. Such work by the Institute complements the Macao SAR Government’s efforts regarding promotion of business-formation skills among the city’s young people and supports Macao’s goal of achieving economic diversification.
IFTM’s approach to spur entrepreneurial thinking in Macao is multi-pronged. It includes a course on entrepreneurship, launched in 2014, and now available to all IFTM bachelor’s degree students. The course provides undergraduates with an enterprising outlook that they can utilise to generate career opportunities.
The Institute also stimulates skill development and motivation via an entrepreneurship competition called “Idea-cation”. IFTM similarly supports interested students, alumni, and those starting the journey to becoming an entrepreneur, via its “Ideation Lab” business idea incubator, launched in January. In addition, the Institute has an iRetail Lab that, among other things, provides a physical and online retail platform for entrepreneurs to showcase and sell their products.
The latest PATA Gold Awards presentation was held online. It acknowledged 25 organisations in the Asia-Pacific region that have made an outstanding contribution to tourism marketing, sustainability, and human capital development. A total of four entities in Macao were awarded for their respective achievements in various areas of the tourism and hospitality industry. IFTM was the only local higher education institution honoured.
In 1997, the Institute was presented a PATA Gold Award in the Education and Training category for the high quality of its educational programmes. The second PATA Gold Award came in April 2002 and recognised the Institute’s role in developing the Macao Occupational Skills Recognition System, a training and certification scheme launched with initial support from experts from the European Union, that applies to various job categories in the tourism and hospitality. In 2020, IFTM claimed its third PATA Gold Award, for Human Capital Development, in acknowledgement of the value of the Institute’s annual Tourism Education Student Summit, showcasing the best student research.