Five students of Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) attended Incontro Romano Congress in Rome, Italy earlier and received "2013 BestResearch Paper" and "Special Award for the Booth" in the international fair which is one of the sessions of the Congress. This is the second year IFT participated and gained awards at the Congress. Incontro Romano is an international congress aimed to improve tourism students' and practitioners' understanding of the industry trends and enrich their professional knowledge. Attendees mainly are university students of tourism and hospitality majors all over the world. Every year, the Congress committee will decide a topic and candidates need to submit projects on the topic, and most importantly, the candidates must merge the culture of their own countries with their projects. After the preliminary contest, final candidates will be invited to Rome to attend the Congress and present their researches and projects. The topic of Incontro Romano 2013 is "Festival, the art of surprising". Over 300 people from Japan, America, Italy, Spain, Macao and other countries or regions attended the Congress. The IFT students successfully entered into the final round and were invited to present their researches and projects and join the international fair. Amongst them, IFT Hotel Management Year 3 students Sarah Chen and Subraina Sun submitted a research paper "How Macao hospitality workers celebrate for the guests and for themselves" and presented how to make snowy moon-cake, traditional moon-cake and Chinese tea. In addition, three IFT Tourism Business Management students Alice Zhou, Lily Chen and Jelana Wang submitted a video to present Macauo's annual grand event - Lusofonia Festival, and unique traditions of Chinese minority groups at the fair. With the exceptional research paper and presentation skills, Sarah Chen and Subraina Sun won "2013 Best Research Paper" with their research paper "How Macao hospitality workers celebrate for the guests and for themselves", which aimed to arouse respect and support for hospitality workers from families and the society, and the importance of hospitality industry to local social development. Besides, they designed a booth to demonstrate how to make snowy moon-cake, traditional moon-cake and Chinese tea ceremony, vividly displaying the inheritance and innovation of Chinese traditional festivals to audiences. Another group of participating IFT students Alice Zhou, Lily Chen and Jelana Wang stood out amongst all the contestants with their attractive design theme at their booth, presenting traditional art crafts, outfits and accessories of Chinese minority groups, and lively performing Chinese paper cutting, finally were awarded a special award of booth. IFT encourages students to participate in a variety of competitions and events, in order to express their opinion and suggestions for the industry and social development. Through participating in the Congress, IFT students were able to understand more about hospitality workers in Macao and learnt that we should support and respect them for the healthy development of Macao's hospitality industry.
