Letter of motivation for a Diploma program in Tourism and Hotel Management

Appreciate your help a lot!!

Letter of motivation covering the following topics (2 pages)

If tourism is sustainable, it must also be sustainable for the people who work in it.

My name is xxx, and I am currently working as a tour leader throughout my lovely country, Vietnam. After seeing many female tour guides/tour leaders being laid off without any support for their career transition plans, I feel the urge to look back at my definition of sustainable tourism. If tourism is sustainable, why do frontline female staff often have short career spans, high turnover rates, and difficulty reaching higher positions? I decided to start on a journey to find the answer, and the Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management in xxx, is my next destination. I aim to gain a deeper understanding of Tourism Management, followed by a Teacher Training Module. It aligns with my career goals as a training and consulting manager in the tourism industry, supporting female workers in their careers.

I took my first step toward establishing academic knowledge in tourism at the University of Social Science and Humanity, a member of Vietnam National University. During my studies, I was drawn to sustainable tourism and community development. My scientific research on cultural heritage and my university thesis on rural tourism development enhanced my ability to use research methods, examining and evaluating the impact of tourism on the region where I was born. They remarkably contributed to my graduation with a 3.63 GPA, and my thesis ranked second among students in the department. From there, I decided to align my career in tourism with sustainable development.

After my graduation, I worked as a tour guide to apply my academic knowledge in practice. In my first year at a travel company specializing in educational tours, Discova, I developed cross-cultural communication, public speaking, and people skills through community projects in Northern Vietnam. As a connector, I took charge of multiple tasks: conducting projects, ensuring students' safety and engagement, and delivering on real local needs. In a short period, my expertise was boosted to a higher level. Over the next year, I switched to become a tour leader with Intrepid, a global company with a strong commitment to sustainability. By taking on more responsibilities through longer trips and larger groups, I significantly strengthened my persistence, leadership, and organizational skills. Within one year, I consistently achieved high customer satisfaction through a feedback return rate of 68%, an NPS (Net Promoter Score) of 89/100, an average leader score of 4.94/5.0, and over 3,000 AUD in local sales.

There are 3 reasons why I chose to study at the Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management in xxx. First, it is about the environment's cultural diversity. Xxx is centrally located in Europe, sharing its rich culture with other countries in the region. It will allow me to apply my strengths in integrating with local culture and international students from multicultural backgrounds. Second, studying in a 6 SDG-ranked country with a long history of tourism development will broaden my perspective on sustainable tourism development, enabling me to understand this concept better. Finally, the ITH provides strong support to students through a 3-month internship at the end of the course. Given my financial situation after proactively suspending my work to pursue academics and long-term career development, I would greatly benefit from applying for a scholarship. Additionally, I chose teacher training as my preferred professional module because I feel an urge to change the perception of female laborers themselves that tourism is a long-lasting, sustainable job.

Due to challenges such as a limited training budget and the long-standing high turnover rate among female workers in tourism, after returning to Vietnam, I intend to create a training program to share a clear career-orientation model for young professionals, especially young women pursuing long-term careers in the tourism industry. With my background as a tour leader and studies at the Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management in Human Resources, Tour Leading, and Regional Aspects & Sustainable Development, I can build an instrumental foundation for designing an orientation course suitable for the Vietnamese future workforce. My first step is to collaborate with university travel clubs and tour guide training centers, initially in Hanoi, the center for tourism training universities, and to share my knowledge through talks and social media. My goal is to mentor and train 5 to 10 young female tour guides/tour leaders each year so they can perform confidently as tour leaders while also preparing well for an enduring career path in various fields. This would prepare them for a stable career ladder with consistently high income and avoid turnover. Additionally, it will also enhance women's position in the industry, contributing to the 5th SDG - gender equality.

To conclude, with a clear career plan and the potential to create opportunities for women, I am confident that my application merits your consideration.

The letter is off to a good start. It should be expanded to meet the 2 page requirement if you can though. While you can submit a single page motivation letter, it is not going to be complete enough to deliver your ideas and character with regards to your chosen diploma program. The reviewer will be looking for a more expanded discussion in this case, which will highlight your participation in the program as a positive thing and allow to to explain your future plans for Vietnamese tourism promotion upon your completion of the program. Always remember that the motivational letter is not a professional or academic biography so any references that sound like a biography must be removed from the discussion through a proper editing process for the content.

Thank you so much for your feedback. I have rewritten it the second time. Could you please help me check it? Appreciate it a lot!
Letter of motivation: If tourism is sustainable, it must also be sustainable for the people who work in it
Dear Members of the Admissions Committee,
My name is xx, and I aspire to become a sustainable tourism educator, supporting and empowering young and middle-aged female tour guides and tour leaders. After seeing many of them laid off without support for their career transition plans, I feel the urge to look back at my definition of sustainable tourism. If tourism is sustainable, why do frontline female staff often have short career spans, high turnover rates, and difficulty reaching higher positions? I decided to start on a journey to find the answer, and the Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management in Salzburg, Austria, is my next destination. I aim to gain a deeper understanding of Tourism Management, followed by a Teacher Training Module, to support female workers in the tourism industry as a training and consulting manager.
I have well prepared myself with a solid background in both academic knowledge and practical experiences in the tourism industry. After a four-year study in Tourism and Travel Management at the University of Social Science and Humanity - a member of Vietnam National University, I built my awareness of different aspects of sustainability, together with the capacity of proficiently utilizing scientific research methods such as PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal), Survey Research technique, and NPS analytic tool (Net Promoter Score). Through my research on "Rural Tourism Development" conducted in my hometown, Nam Dinh province - a part of the Red River Delta wet rice civilization, I proudly contributed an academic perspective to the development of homeland tourism, demonstrating my self-learning ability and my commitment to local tourism development. Alongside an educational foundation, I also develop strong practical skills that benefit my future career goal as a sustainable tourism educator. Over 3 years of experience as a tour guide and tour leader, I developed cross-cultural communication and public speaking skills while imparting my knowledge on trips. With Intrepid - a global company with a strong commitment to sustainability, I gained people skills and a basic understanding of intercontinental cultures through interactions with people from varied backgrounds. Additionally, I significantly strengthened my leadership, time management, and organizational skills by taking on more responsibilities through longer trips and larger groups: conducting the trips smoothly on behalf of the company's credibility, ensuring customer safety and engagement, and delivering on real local needs. The outcome demonstrated my enhanced expertise, with a high customer satisfaction rate (68% feedback return), an average leader score of 4.94/5.0, and over 3,000 AUD in local sales. Also, implementing economic development and public health projects for ethnic minorities in mountainous areas with Discova - a travel company specializing in educational tours, has taught me methods to guide and empower locals to develop their communities and benefit from the value they themselves create.
There are two key reasons that motivated me to choose to study at the Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management in Salzburg, Austria. The first is my personal motivation. With the long-term goal of building a training and mentoring hub model, I come to ITH primarily to acquire the knowledge and skills that I currently lack. In particular, I need to learn lecturing methods, especially those focused on adults, to develop a structured framework for adult education. Based on my existing strengths in public speaking, I believe I can effectively develop these skills at ITH, as my peers will be mature learners aged 35 or younger, and the lecturers at ITH have extensive experience in adult education, allowing me to learn and exchange practical insights directly with them. More importantly, I need to understand the process to design a career-oriented training program. ITH provides General Management & Human Resources, Digital Marketing, and Regional Aspects, which are core subjects that enable me to understand the career life cycle of female tourism workers, identify both their challenges and potential, thereby empowering them to build their own careers. The Teacher Training module, together with the three-month teaching-oriented internship, offers me the opportunity to immediately test and apply what I have learned in Austria, before adapting these approaches to the labour context in Vietnam. The second is my social motivation to make a change in the tourism labor force. Through my hands-on experience as a tour leader, I have seen a system gap when female frontline workers face gender stereotypes and social pressure related to marriage and childbirth. In Vietnam, approximately 65% of women working as full-line tour guides leave the profession by the age of 35. Many struggle to stabilize their careers due to limited administrative skills and opportunities to move into back-office positions within the tourism sector. This eventually causes them to shift to entirely different fields, resulting in a significant loss of human resources in the tourism sector. For these reasons, studying Teacher Training in ITH is the right decision to reshape female workers' perceptions of tourism as a long-lasting, sustainable career.
I foresee two main challenges upon returning to my home country: a limited training budget and a shortage of suitable job positions in the tourism labor market. Therefore, I intend to create a small-scale training program only to share a clear career-orientation model for 30-year-old or older women professionals, pursuing long-term careers in the tourism industry. My first step is to assess women's needs for career transition within the tourism sector to design a training course that develops practical skills, such as tour program design, management, administration, and sales, using their existing strengths and prior professional experience. Second, I will use social media as my marketing strategy to attract and target the learners. Finally, I will collaborate with local travel companies, NGOs, and other travel organizations to create broader employment opportunities. My goal is to mentor and train 5 to 10 female tour guides and tour leaders each year so they can prepare well for an enduring career path in various fields, receiving consistently high income and low turnover. Additionally, it will enhance women's position in the industry, provide high-quality human resources, and contribute to the 5th SDG - Gender Equality, and SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth.
To conclude, with a clear career plan, a strong preparation in both academic and practical backgrounds, and a long-term vision for sustainability in labor force, I firmly believe that this new journey not only represents an important step in my own professional growth, but above all, it shows the potential to empower women to build sustainable and confident career pathways in the Vietnamese tourism industry. With the reasons above, I am confident that my application merits your consideration.

@Holt
Could you please double check my fixed version above? Thank you so much!