PHILIPSBURG--Students of six high schools will go head-to-head in the Junior Minister of Tourism Panel Discussion/Competition 2017 hosted by St. Maarten Tourist Bureau (STB), on May 19. The winner will represent St. Maarten at the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) Youth Tourism Congress in Grenada in October.
The winner will be named Junior Minister of Tourism for one year, during which time he or she will represent the country at local and regional functions together with the Tourist Bureau. In Grenada, the winner will compete against eight to 10 other countries/islands for the regional title of Junior Minister of Tourism.
Participating schools are Milton Peters College (four sections), Sundial School, Methodist Agogic Centre High School, St. Dominic High School, St. Maarten Academy and Charlotte Brookson Academy.
The May event is structured to mirror a CTO Board of Directors’ Meeting – students must come prepared to share their knowledge and views on salient tourism issues. They will be asked to choose one of three tourism-related topics to research and present their findings to a panel of judges and an audience of fellow students, teachers and parents.
A mystery topic will be provided on the day of the competition to test the students’ ability to be spontaneous.
Tourist Bureau Head Rolando Brison is excited about the competition, having represented his school some 16 years ago. He represented St. Maarten at CTO and then the Caribbean as the first chairman of the CTO Youth Congress.
“I'm a first-hand witness to the power of youth tourism awareness initiatives like these in preparing future leaders of our tourism industry. This is a project very dear to my heart and I'm very pleased with our product development team at STB for doing such a great job putting this together,” Brison said in a press statement.
