Travel and tourism personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

I began keeping notes on days out because I got tired of hearing that there was nothing to do near us without a car. Over about a year I put together a blog of twenty-two short trips reachable from Leicester by bus or train for under ten pounds, each with timetables, walking distance and whether there was anywhere sheltered to eat. Writing it taught me more than I expected about the industry I want to work in. I had to think about who I was writing for, what information people actually need before they commit to a journey, and how a place presents itself online compared with what visitors find when they arrive. Some attractions had beautiful photographs and no accessibility information at all; others had nothing but a phone number and were genuinely welcoming when I turned up. That gap between the marketing and the experience is what draws me to this degree. I want to understand how destinations are managed and promoted, how visitor numbers affect the people who live there, and how smaller places compete for attention with obvious honeypots. My Geography A level has given me some of the vocabulary for this, particularly work on regeneration and on the economic effects of tourism in coastal towns, but it stops short of the operational side. Studying travel and tourism at degree level would let me look at both together: the strategy and the day-to-day running. In the longer term I would like to work in destination management or visitor experience for a local authority or a regional tourism body, somewhere I can make practical decisions about signage, transport links and information rather than only writing about them.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

My BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma in Travel and Tourism has been a good fit for how I learn, because most units end in something I have to produce and justify rather than only recall. For the customer service unit I designed a short induction guide for seasonal staff at a fictional visitor attraction, which forced me to think about what a new employee genuinely needs in their first hour. A unit on the visitor attractions sector led me to compare a heritage site and a theme park in terms of pricing, seasonality and how they handle quiet weekdays, and I found the discussion of secondary spending particularly useful when I later looked at how the garden centre where I work makes most of its money from the café rather than the plants. Alongside the diploma I chose A level Geography, which has stretched my writing and my confidence with data. I enjoyed constructing an enquiry around footfall and land use on a local high street, collecting my own counts across three time periods and being honest in my evaluation about how small a sample that was. Statistics work in Geography has also made me more careful about tourism figures I read in the news, since visitor numbers can be counted in several different ways. I have improved most in structuring longer pieces of work: my first assignments were descriptive, and I have learned to build an argument and support it, using feedback from my tutors on where my evidence was thin. Reading Elizabeth Becker's Overbooked gave me a broader sense of the scale of the industry and of the tension between growth and the interests of residents.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

I have worked Saturdays and school holidays in a garden centre café for just over a year, taking orders, serving and clearing, and occasionally covering the till in the shop. It is ordinary work but it has taught me a great deal about pace, about noticing which customers need help before they ask, and about staying pleasant when a queue forms and the coffee machine needs descaling. On bank holidays we can double our usual covers, and I have become the person the supervisor asks to keep the outdoor seating turned around quickly. I also help with a walking group at my local community centre, which meets fortnightly. I share the job of checking routes in advance with another volunteer, looking at surfaces, stiles and where we can stop, because several members use walking poles and one brings a pushchair. We collaborate on a short written route note beforehand and I send the reminder messages. Planning for a group with mixed mobility has changed how I read tourism information: I now look for gradients and bench locations rather than photographs. Outside this I cook a lot, mostly Afghan dishes my mother taught me, and I have been slowly learning Spanish through an app and a conversation group at college, which is at the stage where I can manage a café order and get lost politely. All of this has given me habits I think matter in this field: turning up on time, preparing properly for other people's benefit, and being comfortable talking to strangers of any age.

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