Led by Dean Prof. Michael Hitchcock, a team from FHTM, MUST visited the Tu Lou village site, which is the World Heritage Site and other major tourism factices in Yongding, Fujian Province. The Team met with members of local government, managers of the World Heritage Site and the Principal of the local college where tourism is taught. It was explained to the hosts that the Faculty had experience not only of the management of tourism, but had expertise on the use of rural villages in tourism based on their experiences in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and China. There was great interest in Yong Ding in linking up with some of these other villages to facilitate knowledge transfers and best practice. There were visits to the local college where they met teachers and students, and had discussions about curriculum development and experiential learning. The visit starts the faculty’s future cooperation with Yongding in the fields of the development of research and experiential learning exercise center in Yongding for staff and students at MUST; the development of training courses in cultural tourism for local government in Yong Ding and the local technical college. Assistant Dean Dr. Ivan K. W. Lai and postgraduate program director Dr. Joe Y. Zhou also participated in the visit.
