Young Tourism Professionals of Mongolia Competed

Young Tourism Pro (YTP) is an annual competition among 3rd year students majoring in tourism management or English. The students’ competition was initiated and organised by Selena Travel - one of leading travel companies of Mongolia. Final stage of YTP 2015 was held on 21 March and the winners were announced. The winning team consisted of B. Erdenebulgan (Mongolian National University), G. Nyamjargal (National University of Mongolia), and N. Dashbaljinnyamaa (Ikh Zasag International University). And the best individual contestant was B. Erdenebulgan (Mongolian National University) based on his scores from all 3 stages of the competition. This year’s best teacher was N. Enkhmagnai of Mongolian National University. All winners were given monetary reward, and credentials.

This year’s YTP agenda was “Tourists satisfaction in Mongolia and how to positively affect it”. About 100 students of 9 universities applied for YTP 2015, and 30 of those were chosen to compete at the 1st stage on 07 March (tasks were English language test, and case studies related to tourism management). The second stage followed a week later among 16 contestants, who later were eliminated to 12 based on their knowledge on tourism studies and team work skills. The 12 finalists were further divided into 4 teams and were given the task to study about “Negative impressions of tourist visiting Mongolia and how to improve” and prepare a presentation on this. Most teams recognised that some services in Mongolia such as poor facilities at tourist Ger camps, unfriendly staff in restaurants and bumpy roads leave the majority of negative impressions on foreign tourists visiting Mongolia. They analysed travellers reviews on online travel platforms such as TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet Forum etc and also interviewed numerous Mongolian travel companies besides studying good practices from international travel companies. 

University teachers are happy to prepare their students for YTP every year, and say that YTP motivates tourism students greatly and some students even plan to compete at YTP from their freshmen year. Moreover, YTP judges are carefully chosen based on their experience and expertise in tourism industry, and are usually tourism business people to provide neutrality for fair judging. The judges emphasized that this year’s contestants were excellent with good level of English and decent knowledge on tourism management. 
 

Selena Travel initiated the competition in 2008 among tourism students to contribute to the development of human resources of Mongolian tourism industry. YTP is the stepping stone for many young tourism professionals of Mongolia as each year YTP winners and successful contestants are offered full-time or half-time jobs by prestigious tour operators, hotels are tourist camps, internship and also an opportunity to make contacts in the industry.