Get to know our Canadian Tourism College graduates and hear what they have to say about their experience.
SHANNON WEATHERILL
Hospitality and Resort Business Management Diploma
Are you currently working in the industry?
Currently yes, I currently work for Destinations North America, which provides third party service for the cruise season. We do the directional and check-in for all the cruise passengers for the season.
I spent a year at another college, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I decided to just do a little bit of research and combine my passion for travel, tourism and hospitality into a possible career, and I found CTC. At the time, I wasn’t interested in going through a four year program, so CTC appealed to me because you get 8 months of hands-on training, so you get the credentials but you could also be put out into the work environment which was awesome.
I liked the fact that it was small, kind of like high school in a way that there’s 30 people in one class, so I knew that it would be group work and mentality but there would be that one on one instruction sometimes that you don’t get in a bigger size class. And for me, that’s really important.
I enjoyed meeting people, you can make good contacts and maintain good connections, and I had really great instructors who made the learning experience something that I wanted to do every day. And I wanted to strive and meet my own expectations and theirs as well, because they had high expectations. But the experience that they brought to the table, and how they choose to keep in touch with you after – it’s not just an in-class relationship anymore, it’s kind of like a mentorship into the hospitality industry. I like that, that they’re willing to go the distance for people that they’ve taught.
You start at 8:30, you’re in lectures for 2-3 hours, you get a break in between, another hour of lecture, lunch, and then a couple hours of group work or project work or papers or maybe you’re working on a big assignment, like, we threw the masquerade ball, so we had to event plan and go through the logistics of that, budgeting and everything else. So you get some of that hands-on experience that you might be missing in an educational setting, that you wouldn’t get elsewhere.
I didn’t expect as much group work as there was, that was something that I had to adjust to really fast but other than that no, I liked how it was done and I liked that it was 3 days a week, it gave you the opportunity to still work, even if I wasn’t working at the time, it still gave you the opportunity to have other things besides education going on all at once, I quite enjoyed the condensed program.
Again I think it comes down to the connective part of it, it emphasized especially in the Hospitality industry how much of a network it was and how much you know, you meet this person for 5 minutes but then you could meet them again in 10 years and you can still remember each other, because you may not work together personally, but you may follow their work or see something that they’re attached to, perhaps at a different property or a different company than where you’re at so it’s kind of like “oh I was here then and here then” and now we’re here, and I find that really interesting.
I’d want to get into guest services in hotels, I’d really like to have that full-time steady position and not just seasonal work. I’m keeping my fingers crossed because I have some offers on the table I’m just waiting to hear back. So that’s that I’m really striving for, and then work my way up from there, hopefully into management.
If you are starting out younger, I would definitely look into the programs because I think it’s a little bit of a shock how condensed the program is. I know it’s always changing, but for someone going from high school to hours long lectures at a time I think it’s a bit of a shock of how the program works, and what the expectations are. But if it’s something for you and you think it’s the right fit then I would definitely recommend CTC any day. You know, it wasn’t always easy, but I don’t regret it for a minute.