They are 19 students of the Tourism Management class, completing their second and final year at the hotel school.  Their curriculum includes travel to another country and integrate what they have learnt  in their formal studies at the hotel school.

At the same time, they get the opportunity to learn new things —mores, values and cultures, different techniques in hospitality—all too important not only to improve their knowledge of the tourism sector but also to adopt what's best for the home industry.

Job placement is considered as an important step for the students to get their diploma. This group of students have decided that they will join the crew of Costa cruise for a period of two weeks in that context.
This is the first time that a group of students have thought of completing their training on a cruise while others  have always completed theirs by spending some time in another country.

“The Minister of Tourism, Xavier Luc Duval, had announced that cruises would become an important service that Mauritius would be offering in the coming years. This implies that if we want to survive in the tourism industry, we have to learn how to work on cruises so that we can provide a better service to tourists visiting our island,” says Vani Veerupen, one of the students.

Besides learning new things on the cruise, the students are expecting to promote the tourism industry on the cruise.

“We will be visiting different places in the region of the Indian Ocean such as Madagascar, Reunion Island, Seychelles. We will get the opportunity to learn  about these different places, their customs and their likes and dislikes.  A tourist guide cannot know only about his/her country; one has to know the other places too. Going on this cruise will be very beneficial to us,” says Reshma Purgas.

She adds: “Going on the cruise will open up more doors not only for us but for the country also. Tourism is a sector which is constantly evolving and since it is one of the pillars of our economy, we have to be up-to-date with the new changes.”

She thinks that “a cruise is exactly like a hotel with the only difference that we will be in the ocean. A cruise is like a floating hotel where the services will be the same as hotels offer. On the cruise, there will be workshops  conducted for us every morning.”

The students will be accompanied by their principal teacher, Marie David Malié, and two others during the project.