Higher education | IFT signs curriculum, training agreement with Tencent

IFT President Fanny Vong

The Macao Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) is collaborating with Tencent to enrich the school’s curriculum, jointly explore projects and train talented human resources for the Greater Bay Area.

On the sidelines of yesterday’s agreement signing ceremony, IFT President Fanny Vong explained the agreement to the media.

According to Vong, through this collaboration, the IFT plans to revamp parts of its curriculum to better reflect the new technologies used in the field of tourism.

Tencent will also provide suitable datasets or suitable big data to IFT for the institute’s research into the tourism carrying capacity of Macau, consumer behaviors and other topics. With this data, the IFT is aiming to make better recommendations to the Macau government about its tourism capacity.

The data will contribute to research by the IFT that can be better applied in the real world and improve the IFT’s forecasting and segmentation of the profile of visitors to Macau.

The mainland tech company will also help the IFT deliver training programs regarding smart tourism. “These days, tourism is not a hands-on activities anymore,” Vong said at the signing ceremony.

This summer, the IFT sent a group of students to participate in an internship with Tencent. Vong said that the internship was highly valuable to IFT students. The IFT President hopes the institution can catch up with global trends in the use of digital methods for marketing and communication in the tourism industry.

Earlier this week, the IFT unveiled its role in the development of a new project in Hengqin under the collaboration with the Hengqin New Area Administration Committee.

The project will offer training programs to people in the Greater Bay Area. In addition, the IFT is also partnering with other organizations to enhance tourism education in the Greater Bay Area.