1) The speaker chose to work in the tourism and hospitality industry because she is passionate about it and finds it fascinating, even if she did not need the money. 2) The tourism industry enhances cultural understanding and tolerance by exposing people to different cultures and lifestyles when they travel. People who travel tend to be more open-minded. 3) The speaker believes the tourism industry is "IN" because it is innovative, inspired, and focuses on meeting individual customer needs through personalized experiences rather than just sightseeing.

1. Yuqi Brandy Wang (1155031779)
HTMG 2091 Distinguished Speaker Series
Coordinator: Dr. Johnny Wan
Speaker: Mrs. Eleonore Vial, Dean Director of Academic Development,
INSTITUT PAUL BOCUSE, France
23rd January 2015
I’m All IN
Getting involved in an industry is never a casual or easy decision to make. But
choosing the industry of Hospitality and Tourism is definitely the decision that I have
made with all seriousness and passion.
I have reflected for long about what life I would like to lead in my future. I have tried
the mechanism of pushing thoughts to an extreme – if I had won a lottery so that I
don’t need to work for money, what industry would still be fascinating enough for me
to work in? - My answer is Tourism.
“Either mind or body must be on journey.” This is my motto. I do believe in the value
of “transmission” which was mentioned in the last Distinguish Speaker Series on
January 23, 2015, and which I believe is also the core value of Tourism industry. As
tourism professionals, we transport people from place to place, showing them the
freedom of human being and endless possibilities of their life on earth. Through the
transmission of lifestyle and culture, we can enhance cross-boundary understanding
and cultural tolerance among people from different background around the world.
People with travel experience are generally more open-minded, full of curiosity and
courage to explore and to embrace. It is, in my opinion, a lofty industry to be
dedicated in.
Tourism is an IN industry – innovative, inspired, incomparable, inimitable, integrative,
interactive, infinite, international and individualized. The one I agree most is the
attribute of “individualized”. With the development of service industry, customer’s
needs and wants is moving up from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – tourists won’t be
satisfied with normal sightseeing, but cultural emerging, historical understanding,
beauty appreciation or even spiritual enlightenment. That’s why we have to
development new type of guests’ profiles – from demographics to psychographics.
Though both types of profiles are changing as time goes by and we need to keep
updating them, psychographics status is more individualized and customer products
provided according to psychographics profile are more personalized and exclusive,
which would lead to profitable brand equity.

2. I have a new idea about this IN industry – it is “introverted”. By the word “introverted”
I don’t mean tourists or tourism professionals are introverts, but the new trend of
taking care of tourists’ inner feeling. Instead of traditional tourism that only do the
transmission of people, modern tourism should take more care about customers
psychological and even spiritual experience. For example, Buddhism and the concept
of soul purifying can be integrated into the package design to destinations like India,
multiculturalism and national syncretism into the journey of New York.
Besides, new trend of E-distribution is another fashion booming in our industry. We
rely more and more on online marketing than offline nowadays. The rise and keen
competition on online travel agents (OTAs) like Booking.com, Agoda.com,
Priceline.com are good examples. A common and effective practice is to initially
suggest possible destinations to registered members, according to their profiles which
derived from past purchase records, preference survey and consumer behavior
observation. This practice depends on Big Data which is also the trend of “internet” in
our IN industry.
Individually I made up my mind to devote to this fascinating and interesting industry.
Brandy Wang is all IN!
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