An ambition to teach

2 December 2011

With visitor numbers to Papua New Guinea steadily growing, Australia-Pacific Technical College graduate Alphonse Foimae is set to make his own special contribution to the country's tourism industry.

Alphonse Foimae is the kind of person you increasingly meet with in countries where a growing economy is opening up all kinds of new employment opportunities.

Just such a country is Papua New Guinea, where not only is strong economic growth in development and construction forecast over the next five years but there is an increasingly thriving tourism industry. In Pacific countries tourism is usually one of the major growth points of the economy.

So when Alphonse Foimae enrolled as a student with the Australia-Pacific Technical College he chose to study Tourism Operations. It was not an unusual choice. Right from the start the APTC was alert to the importance of tourism and hospitality in growing Pacific economies and programmed its courses accordingly. Alphonse travelled to Vanuatu for his studies at the APTC campus in that country. He graduated and his career has since gone from strength to strength.

His first big success was to be headhunted by the Lae Yacht Club in his home country as Duty Manager. Lae is a city for both tourism and industry, a microcosm of PNG's economic expansion. Further, the Lae Yacht Club is right in the spotlight of world yachting. Hundreds of cross-Pacific sailors put in there for a longer or shorter stay. Alphonse was thus dealing with an international clientele.

His next step was working in logistic in the engineering field. This too is a vital sector in the PNG economy. But Alphonse's real ambition still lies in his initial field of tourism. His enthusiasm for welcoming visitors to Papua New Guinea, first shown at the Lae Yacht Club, will soon take a new turn when Alphonse opens his own hospitality school, where he will train a new generation in some of the essential skills PNG increasingly requires. His expertise and energy are a guarantee that Alphonse's school will make an important contribution the bright prospects of PNG tourism.