RMIT student’s sustainable tourism initiative goes international

RMIT student’s sustainable tourism initiative goes international

“I have been concerned about unsustainable tourism development in Vietnam for some time now. I wanted to do something about this but didn’t really know where to start.”

For RMIT Vietnam Tourism and Hospitality Management student Tang Minh Nguyet, it was ‘go big or go home’ at her first international competition.

Nguyet recently attended UNLEASH 2019, a global innovation lab, in Shenzhen, China because she saw it as the “perfect opportunity for me to start creating something tangible that can help solve the problem”.

Tang Minh Nguyet (second from left) at UNLEASH 2019 in Shenzhen China. Tang Minh Nguyet (second from left) at UNLEASH 2019 in Shenzhen China.

The event brought together more than 1,000 young people to collaborate on disruptive solutions for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Nguyet and her team of five impressed their peers and judges with the idea for XPLOR, an app promoting sustainable tourism practices, and placed second in their category, SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production.

Nguyet (pictured middle) and her team pitching their idea at UNLEASH 2019.Nguyet (pictured middle) and her team pitching their idea at UNLEASH 2019.

The team is now seeking funding to develop the app and pilot it in Sapa, a popular tourism destination in Vietnam. They are also aiming to take the idea to other competitions to attract more investors.

As the youngest in her team and the only one still at university, Nguyet was able to learn from the industry experience of her team mates. In return, her academic background in tourism uniquely positioned her as a subject matter expert among a team of technology, energy, environment and marketing professionals. She said her time at RMIT equipped her with the ability to perform well in such a diverse team.

“I’ve been a buddy to incoming foreign students, and I’ve also worked on quite a few group assignments and online courses with students from other countries. So I know a thing or two about cross-cultural teams and online collaboration across time zones,” Nguyet said.

“Through UNLEASH and XPLOR, I got to further develop those skills which are invaluable, especially in an industry as tourism.”

Nguyet’s team represented five nationalities and industries. Nguyet’s team represented five nationalities and industries.

Nguyet’s work with sustainable tourism did not start with XPLOR. Along with several academics at RMIT University and a university in the US, she is part of an ongoing tourism research project focused on the behaviour of foreign tourists in Vietnam. She recently represented her team to talk about this project at an international tourism conference in Hanoi.

RMIT University Tourism and Hospitality Management Senior Lecturer and leader of the aforementioned tourism research project Dr Nuno Ribeiro said that young people like Nguyet are leading the way in finding sustainable solutions for Vietnam’s tourism.

“That’s also why our Tourism and Hospitality Management program very much focuses on unlocking new ideas to do things better and more sustainably in the industry. We do that by means of practical discussions, industry engagement, and problem-based learning in the classroom, but also increasingly through collaborative research between our students and our faculty,” Dr Ribeiro said.

“We really stress the international aspects of such collaborative research projects, so our students get full support from our global network to make new initiatives such as these happen. At RMIT Vietnam, we educate our students to be global citizens, and Nguyet is a prime example of what that means.”

Story: Ngoc Hoang

Photos: UNLEASH (https://unleash.org/)

13 January 2020

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