Students experienced first-hand how to run a luxury resort

At the Maekok River Village Resort, in Northern Thailand, BTEC students experienced first-hand how to run a luxury resort from 29^th Feb -4^th Mar 2016. With complete access to the resort and their staff, students meet all the departmental heads and find out how they maintain their quality standards. They hear how important the recruitment process is, how to find the right suppliers and what finance and marketing models are used.

Students are challenged at all levels from dealing with difficult customers and offering tourism advice – to making-up a hotel room to the highest of standards. The hotel staff then rate the students’ efforts.

The BTEC hospitality students did some industrial size cooking making 100 portions of massaman curry with 3 side dishes.

The owner of the resort and former Islander Bryan Massingham talked to the group about his goals for the business and asked them to come up with a marketing proposition which is presented to senior staff for consideration with one of this year’s proposals being adopted.

Among the business planning are a series of confidence and team building activities such as zip lining, technology challenges and kayaking.

The trip forms part of the BTEC students’ units of work which are then written up and externally verified.

Teacher of Business Studies and Economics Anny Kim said; “Not all the students know each other very well and this trip means that they can build relationships and we hope it fills then with confidence.”

Roger Wilkinson, Head of the Applied Learning Pathway; “I saw students really switch on to work, during this trip, because it is more relevant and they are seeing what they are writing about. Working on location means the relevance and quality of their work improves and they begin to take more pride in what they are doing.