The Commission on Higher Education Western Visayas, through the Council of Deans and Project Heads, spearheaded the hosting of the Hospitality and Tourism Management (HTM) Graduating Students Congress on May 23, 2024, at the Grand Xing Hotel, Iloilo City.
Attended by more than 700 participants, a great combination of HTM graduating students, faculty, and deans from 75 colleges and universities from the whole of Region Six.
Invited to be one of the speakers by MICE advocate, FBSE trainer, and an academician herself, Dr. Mae Panes, I found myself standing in a big crowd of the segment that plays an imperative part of the ecosystem of the hospitality and tourism industry: the academe.
In a sea of aspirants and deans who manage the universities offering HTM curriculum, I sincerely felt the delight that we have truly come out of the ill fate of having to confine our students and youth due to the pandemic. Now we are back to gathering them once again and hoping to give them enough inspiration and motivation to pursue a career of service in hospitality and tourism. Here are our future front office associates, housekeeping staff, food and beverage servers, and even our future hotel general managers.
Deciding to pick five past articles I wrote here in Malaya Business Insight to articulate the salient points of preparing the audience for the career track they have chosen: “The Art of Loving the Philippines,” “Service is Impossible without Love,” “Looking Beyond the Obvious,” “Mustering the Courage to Say the Truth No Matter What,” and the article on the Analogy of the 1000 Allocation.
As I shared the insights of the above articles, I felt the strong emotion of the hope there was in the room with the desire to connect to this generation and share the life lessons we have acquired through the years and through the unique experiences we get every time we interface with each and every guest we host in the hotel.
We thank God for the opportunity to pay it forward. We are blessed to have a chance to engage the generation who will take the responsibility of our positions in the future. We genuinely feel nostalgic and see ourselves in their shoes of these graduating students a few decades back: young, full of energy and hope. Sometimes with idealism and sometimes wanting to control yet place maker of the important future. As I went discussing from one life lesson to another, I felt how the attitude of gratitude has kept me going. How this work ethic has gotten me to become a person wanting to pay back through these speaking engagements and opportunities to showcase our meaningful tidbits of the survival tools in life.
We have so many varied activities that this industry allows us to experience and we are thankful to belong to such a dynamic industry that allows multi-faceted journeys to take place. This one though was really self-satisfying; paying it forward in this manner is a blessing. I believe the true value of leadership is being able to inspire others and taking time to share the God-given gifts that we all uniquely have.
To inspire is not just to share a context of words that say so; to truly inspire is to live the words by consistently being the person that others will hope to be. To be able to pay it forward with all sincerity and let the youth know that despite the noise that covers the worlds we revolve in, there is a future that we can mold and intentionally make better for.
