(FP)

The Tourism and Maritime Career Showcase, which was postponed due to the passage of Tropical Storm Kirk, will now be held tomorrow, Thursday, October 4, at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, Two Mile Hill, St. Michael.

The event, which has over 40 exhibitors and is expected to attract hundreds of school children, will start at 10:00 a.m. and end at 5:00 p.m.

According to Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Tourism Product Authority (BTPA), Marsha Alleyne, this year’s career showcase promises to be bigger and better.

She explained that the showcase is necessary since young people are not fully aware of the variety of careers available in the tourism industry.

“The average school-aged child felt that tourism was about chefs, bartenders, cooks and front desk people.  They didn’t realize that a social media manager is in tourism, that marketing managers and communication specialists can be in tourism and that nurses are on site and doctors are on call. So it is not only the ‘regular’ jobs that are available but a wide cadre of careers,” Mrs. Alleyne pointed out.

She added that telecommunications company Flow had partnered with the BTPA to host the 2018 Tourism and Maritime Career Showcase.  Noting that the theme for the recently concluded Tourism Week was Tourism and Digital Transformation, she said it was important that a “technology savvy company” came on board to help persons understand the connections between tourism and other industries.

Director of Corporate Communications at Flow, Marilyn Sealy, said that Flow was very pleased to be a part of the career showcase, and described it as a great collaboration.

“There is a huge technological world out there… so we are hoping to also showcase careers in technology during that time.  We have been working with the hotel and tourism associations and the industry for a while now.

Everything is digital now, so when tourists come to Barbados, they want to remain fully connected. We are almost ready to go into a really great collaboration with a local hotel chain to ensure that their guests are connected. So [this] digital world and technology are very important to the tourism industry,” she stressed.

shamkoe.pile@barbados.gov.bb

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