Rendezvous Resort supports applied learning experiences

RENDEZVOUS Beach Resort recently hosted a contingent of students from the Grande Riviere Primary School on a field trip at the resort at Malabar Beach. The exercise was the resort’s contribution to the just-concluded Junior Achievement’s Global Marketplace Programme which took place at the school earlier this term, over a period of eight weeks. The JA Global Marketplace Programme provides practical information about the importance of international trade, what makes world trade work, and how trade affects students’ daily lives.

Several organizations, including Rendezvous’ sister resort, BodyHoliday, participated by providing insightful presentations at the school, and then hosting field trips to support the practical learning side of the knowledge imparted in the classroom setting.

A concern generally shared by recruiters, is that of the quality of candidates who eventually filter into the labour force in our respective industries. The resort sees field trips as one of the best tools that can be used to provide students a real-world experience, as this helps deeper inculcate into future workers, knowledge and understanding of what occurs in real life and marketplace expectations of workers, even from an early age.

Field trips are thus a multi-sensory learning experience that enable students (to an extent) to examine firsthand the actual people, spaces and tools they’ve heard about, and thus each such experience solidifies learning and supports important academic concepts. Such trips have been known to help increase test scores by making concepts come alive and thereby more memorable.

Ms Genevieve Dixon, the resorts’ Corporate Director for Human Resources stated, “It is useful when the corporate community can buttress the formidable work of the nation’s educators through such activities. The better the learning experience, the better students develop into their best selves, which eventually redounds to the benefit of not only the hospitality sector but all areas of endeavor.”

She added that, “Rendezvous and BodyHoliday are committed to supporting the educational experience of the future workforce of Saint Lucia and in fact the world”.

At Rendezvous, the students got to learn the history of the 50+ year old resort having started in the 1960’s as the family home and former Plantation House of the owners, the Barnard family. They heard from various leaders who explained the work of their departments in the overall operations. They visited various locations and learnt some of the strategic thinking behind the resort’s StolenTime concept, which was designed to create an ideal holiday for couples, who derive from the global marketplace.

The trip concluded in a quiz recapping what the students had been exposed to, followed by a exciting dance exercise activity lead by the Resort’s fitness instructors at the Beach Studio, and then some sumptuous snacks afterwards.