Okamoto Takehiro, a representative of JIC Travel Center LTD (Japan), took time during his visit to Vladivostok to meet with ILS 10th graders participating in our school's large-scale project “Vladivostok – tourism gateway to the APR”. At a round table discussion devoted to the specific requirements of Japanese tourists visiting the Russian Far East, Okamoto Takehiro explained what attracts Japanese tourists to Vladivostok.
“Vladivostok is the European-style city in closest proximity to Japan, featuring European architecture, Russian cuisine and other aspects of European civilization. After spending 2-3 days in Vladivostok, many Japanese tourists then travel to Moscow by train.”
As they prepare to present their projects to the judges on April 26, the 10th graders are doing their best to make their business ideas interesting for the many foreign tourists who visit our city.
“We want to create for our tourists from Japan, China and South Korea an application that will help them to discover the many beautiful places our area has, find cafes and restaurants with Russian cuisine, and also travel comfortably around the city using an audio guide in their phone,” explains Irina Kulakovskaya (section 10B). “For the application to work effectively, we will need to know approximately how much money Japanese tourists are prepared to spend in the city each day. Thanks to Okamoto Takehiro, we now have a lot of highly detailed information on this and other important aspects of tourists’ visits.”
The students' discussions with Okamoto Takehiro proved very useful, as he carefully explained Japanese tourists’ preferences, offered his opinions about the 10th graders’ projects, and indicated which categories of Japanese tourists could be target tour consumers.
“Over time, our school has become a unique educational platform, where cooperation between students and teachers extends beyond the classroom,” notes ILS Principal Olga Shevchenko. “Project activities help students to develop their soft skills, which will definitely serve them well in the future. By soft skills, we mean, for example, the ability to establish comfortable mutual relations, to work in teams, to become good at persuading, leading, motivating, critical thinking and conflict resolution, and also to develop oratory skills, flexible thinking and self-organization. We are very pleased that our project efforts are strongly supported by our partners, who are always willing to share their knowledge and experience with us.”
