Great Bay,– Some 31 students of the Oranje School, ranging from 9 to 11 years old were given a special World Tourism Day treat by the St. Maarten Tourist Bureau last Friday. The students were accompanied by their Principal, Kay Philips and three class teachers on an island tour organized by the Tourist Bureau, with a lunch break at Subway restaurant at Maho Village.
“We learnt a lot about our island,” many of the students commented at the end of the almost 5-hour tour, which took them to most of the historical sites and landmarks of the island, while showing them the natural beauty of the island.
“The idea of the tour is to make the young students see what our visitors see when they come here and what makes St. Martin so special,” explained Mr. Augusto Priest of the Product Development Division of the St. Maarten Tourist Bureau.
According to Ms. Lisa Noel of the same Division who accompanied the students on the tour, they showed keen interest in all the information they were being given.
“The children asked very intelligent questions and were all very excited,” she said.
Principal Ms. Kay Philips disclosed that she would personally make sure the children, who were all taking notes, wrote about their experience and what they learned on the tour in a class project to be supervised by their teachers.
World Tourism Day was marked on September 27, 2009 under the theme, “Celebrating Diversity.” Commissioner of Tourism, Frans Richardson, appeared on several radio talk shows on the day, including Culture Time on PJD-2 Radio, hosted by Fabian Badejo and Fernando Clark, to talk about his efforts to boost tourist arrivals to the island during this period of global economic meltdown.
Among the other activities the Tourist Bureau organized to mark the day were several appearances in the local media of officials of the Bureau, paired with some of the more prominent cultural workers on the island. It also published a newspaper supplement that appeared in The Daily Herald of Friday, September 25, 2009.