The Pacific Asia Tourism Association (PATA) Annual Summit was held in Cebu, Philippines with about 500 tourism professionals in attendance. The event was held on May 9-12, 2019.
Genji Lestari, President University student majoring in Management batch 2016 and another 24 students from various countries were sponsored to attend this Asia Pasific’s leading event.
Her explanation about halal tourism in a 5 minutes YouTube video brought her to win this sponsorship ticket. In this video, she promoted halal tourism which highlights the importance of paying attention to the Moslem tourists’ needs, such as a prayer room and no alcohol sign. According to her, halal tourism is highly important for tourist destination in Asia Pacific because there are a lot of Moslem in this area. Therefore, the presence of halal tourism should be included in all tourist destinations in Asia Pacific.
While attending the PATA Annual Summit, Genji also won the #PYS Facebook Post Challenge. Along with 3 other students from Bournemort University, the University of Queensland, and Wakayama University, she had a chance to sit down with the CEO of PATA for a casual chat.
As PATA is dedicated to the sustainable development of the travel and tourism industry, the Facebook Post Challenge required Genji to write an essay about sustainability. She then introduced D.E.A.R campaign in her writing to promote sustainability. She proposes four important components of sustainability. First, in tourism, sustainability is Dealing with all generations. Everyone should take part in protecting our tourist destination and business. Second, the government should make well-Elaborated rules and regulations about the tourist’s destination and business. Third, planning without Action is zero. All the rules and regulations should be followed by real action. Last, Retain and evaluate the programs that have already existed are important to keep the tourist’s destination and business alive.
“I gained a lot of new experiences and insight into tourism through this event. I got a chance to have a talk with the CEO of PATA. Also, I got a chance to meet real business practitioners and learn from them. It was interesting how I met a lady who is doing a dried orange business and directly learned from her to do deep market research. I learned that to start a business, we need to know exactly the characteristic of our target consumers. Therefore, we can choose the best strategy to be used to promote our product,” said Genji.