ITC the place-to-see for visiting Okinawa tourism officials
When officials from Okinawa are in New Zealand, they usually reach out to ITC tutor Takeyuki Morita to learn more about ITC and tourism in NZ.
Earlier this year, officials from Okinawa Council in Japan arrived in New Zealand for a four-day whirlwind business trip.
The officials came to New Zealand to research how to provide better tourism facilities in Okinawa. They reached out to ITC for advice and asked to be shown around the ITC Campus.
Unfortunately, ITC was closed for the summer holiday period, but one of our tutors, Takeyuki Moreta, was honoured to meet with the officials on ITC’s behalf.
“Okinawa is a destination that welcomes the same number of visitors as Hawaii every year, so it was a huge honour to be approached by Okinawa Council for advice,” says Takeyuki.
“They did not contact any other tourism training providers or lecturers in New Zealand – only ITC. I think this is because some of the members visited ITC last year and were very impressed by our training programme.”
Takeyuki spoke to the Okinawa Council officials about accessible tourism and the ITC curriculum. He believes the officials learned a lot from their visit and will keep in touch.
This meeting marks just one of many connections between Okinawa and ITC.
Okinawa is Takeyuki’s hometown and he has travelled back there to deliver tourism workshops several times since moving to New Zealand (where he is currently the only Japanese person conducting tourism research).
Last year, Takeyuki was invited by the Okinawa Chamber of Commerce to deliver an exclusive workshop about ‘Cross-cultural communication in business management’. He spoke to attendees about cross-cultural communication in the tourism industry, and he used ITC as an example of a business that does it really well. You can read more about this workshop here.
Takeyuki says he is approached by most Okinawa businesses if they visit New Zealand. For example, he was recently contacted by the Marketing Manager for Orion Beer, one of the biggest businesses in Okinawa.
“It’s cross-cultural relationships like these that really put the ‘International’ in ITC,” says Lesley Brough, ITC International Marketing Manager.
“Takeyuki brings a wealth of knowledge about Japanese business and communication to ITC which is extremely valuable to our students,” Lesley adds.
We look forward to meeting with more Okinawa officials in 2019.
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