Dr. Elizabeth Agyeiwaah, Assistant Professor, Macau University of Science and Technology, visited IFTM on 19 Nov 2020 and delivered a speech on sustainable tourism. The guest lecture was organised by Dr. Soey Sut Ieng LEI, Lecturer of School of Hotel Management at IFTM, and was delivered to first-year hotel management students taking the Introduction to Tourism Services course.
Dr. Agyeiwaah is an expert in sustainable tourism. Her research on sustainable tourism has been published on top-tier journals such as Tourism Management, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, and Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing.
In addition to introducing the definition and measurement of sustainable tourism, Dr. Agyeiwaah also shared cases about hotels’ sustainability practices around the world and asked students to contemplate whether enough actions have been taken. Specifically, Dr. Agyeiwaah discussed the relevance of sustainability during COVID-19 and emphasised the particular importance for tourism and hospitality businesses to integrate sustainability strategically into their business operations to sustain in the long run.
During the class, Dr. Agyeiwaah interacted with students through different online activities such as Kahoot games and Poll-everywhere application to engage students and motivate them to ask questions. At the end of the lecture, students were encouraged to share their daily life practices that can help sustain the environment and to share some of the challenges when implementing sustainable tourism practices. In addition to learning about sustainable tourism, students were also interested in learning more about Ghana, the home country of Dr. Agyeiwaah. Interesting conversations were initiated as students were curious about Dr. Agyeiwaah’s life in Macao. Students also raised questions about sustainable tourism practices implemented in Ghana compare with those in Macao.
According to Dr. Agyeiwaah, while hotels in Macao are generally devoting considerable resources on promoting sustainable tourism, there is always more we can do to protect our environment for a more sustainable future.