March 4, 2003

Spring Break in Jamaica Holds Ecotourism Lessons for Hospitality Students

University Park, Pa. – Kaitlin O’Connell says that fellow Penn State students who spent spring break in Jamaica last year told her “it was the best thing they ever did.” Thus encouraged, this year, she’s going to follow their lead and spend seven days in paradise working as hard as for any other class she’s taking.

As was the case for the students who had gone before, when O’Connell, eight other Penn State students, and their instructor touch down in Jamaica on March 8, it won’t be for fun in the sun, but for research and lessons on how the island’s hospitality firms attract and cater to its growing number of ecotourists. The group will survey hundreds of students from different universities who are relaxing on the famous Seven Mile Beach about how Jamaica is falling short of, meeting, or exceeding their pre-visit expectations, and analyze the results upon their return to campus; tour at least eight island resorts; and learn about the Jamaica Tourist Board, the Negril Coral Reef Preservation Society and several tourist-oriented commercial operations.

The tour price itself constitutes tuition for the class, and each student has his or her own reason (besides getting away from the central Pennsylvania winter) for going. For example, O’Connell, a hotel, restaurant and institutional management (HR&IM) major from Allentown, wants to compare the island’s recreational facilities to those in a casino setting where she plans to work later this year. Casey Marek, another HR&IM major from Collegeville, will look at events planning practices at the resorts. Lew Gorman, a wildlife and fisheries science major from Cherry Hill, N.J., is aiming his career hopes at the ecotourism field and wants to see it in action. Jami DiMichele, an HR&IM major from Trout Run, is interested in restaurant operations at tourist hotspots.

For 16 years, Elwood L. “Dick” Shafer, professor of tourism and environmental management in Penn State’s School of Hotel, Restaurant and Recreation Management, has led such research-oriented trips for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students to the Caribbean islands. Each year’s trip is the focal point of Shafer’s class on “sustainable tourism” development through ecotourism management – or maintaining tourism levels that benefit, rather than harm, a destination’s economy and natural and cultural resources. He will be helped during this year’s trip by Youngsoo Choi, a graduate student in HR&IM.

“Ecotourism ties into ecosystem management technology, which may well emerge in this century as more important than either the communications revolution or biotechnology because of its potential usefulness in guaranteeing a livable environment,” Shafer points out.

Several other graduate students will also make the trip in order to gather background for their own ongoing projects. One of them, Hui Hua “Pamela” Huang, hopes to transfer useful tourism development practices that she sees in Jamaica to her homeland of Taiwan. Another one, Harry Crissy, of State College, is applying his experience in resort development to research wage distribution, socioeconomic and environmental issues in such ecotourism locations as Jamaica and Costa Rica.

“Twenty years ago, people built hotels in exotic places that attracted too many tourists for the environment to handle and didn’t benefit the local population,” Crissy says. “Today, guidelines are being worked on so that developing countries will someday be able to get low-interest loans from the World Bank to generate tourist trade in environmentally- and socially-responsible ways. The key is education – both for the developers and the tourists – so that both parties benefit.”

**gwc**

Editors: Dr. Shafer is at (814) 865-7128 or els1@psu.edu
Contact: Gary W. Cramer, Penn State Department of Public Information, at
(814) 865-7517 or gwc104@psu.edu