GUIDELINES FOR RESEARCH AWARD AND COMPETITION
The GTTP country Directors select a topic for research, and it changes each year. Each GTTP member country determines how it will organize its national competition, and deadlines for entries vary from country to country depending on school schedules. All questions on entering your national competition should be directed to the GTTP Director in your country.
The winning team in each country is invited to send a teacher and two students to the GTTP International Student Teacher conference. Teams meet for five days in November. The GTTP Global Partners sponsor the students and teachers. Delta Airlines provides air tickets for the teams. Starwood provides hotel rooms. Participants have an opportunity to meet GTTP Global Partner Advisory Board members, visit Amadeus’ high tech center in Sofia Antipolis, go sightseeing, and meet GTTP students and teachers from around the world.
In Nice, the way your team presents its findings is for you to decide, but your presentation should be professional. Your team will have as much time as it needs, but most are about 30 minutes. Your presentation must be forwarded to GTTP headquarters prior to the meeting to ensure that your presentation (videos, power point. et.c) can be accessed on Amadeus’ technology platform. Exact requirements are provided to the GTTP Director in each country and are forwarded to the winning teams. Usually it takes a team about 20-30 minutes to present their research and then answer questions from the other students and teachers. Additionally, each winning team is required to prepare a written case study about their research that can be used by students in GTTP schools. Teachers are required to prepare a brief teaching guide for other teachers to use when discussing your research. In the section below, “What are Case Studies,” you can read about case studies and how to prepare one.
The topic for 2015 is “Sustainable Adventure Tourism.” More details on this topic are available on the Overview page. The 2014 case studies on “Technology and Sustainable Tourism” are posted on our our web site.
Please read the next sections on case studies, and download the guide on “How to Write a Good Case Study.”
What Are Case Studies?
Case studies provide information on about real people in real situations. A good case study lets you feel as if you were there, looking at the situation. For example, a case study on Jamaican heritage sites should have enough information and photos that you can understand what the questions are. Then you can figure out what the possible solutions might be if there is a problem, and you can evaluate the student’s recommendations. The students who have won the GTTP Research Awards for their countries give you, the reader, an understanding of their unique situations.
The GTTP has prepared a guide to doing research and preparing a case study. To review it, click here: How to Write a Good Case Study.
Case Topics and Classroom Use
Prior cases studies have included technology in tourism, culinary tourism, innovation in tourism, festival tourism, responsible tourism development, historic preservation, cultural tourism, adventure tourism, community tourism, heritage tourism, sports tourism, and national parks. These are all important topics for tourism students and practitioners.
The case studies can be viewed by visiting our online archive. The complete cases take time to download because most have pictures; they include text for students and teaching notes. You can reprint the cases for classroom use, but you must credit the GTTP, the student authors, their teacher and the school when you do so.
We believe these case studies can enrich your understanding of important tourism topics and how they are viewed in different countries and cultures.
