Teachers and students say this year’s Tourism and Hospitality Studies exam was very much like last year’s, with some very challenging questions in Paper Two asking students to apply their THS’s knowledge to current issues
Teachers and students say this year’s Tourism and Hospitality Studies (THS) exam was very much like last year’s, with some very challenging questions in Paper Two asking students to apply their THS’s knowledge to current issues.
In Paper Two, candidates chose three out of five essay questions, but a student surnamed Wong said it was not easy to select three. “All five questions were all very hard. For instance, Q5 (b) in Paper Two asked us to identify the five attributes of a successful attraction and determine if the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal has achieved each of them. Since it was only built in 2013, it's hard to say whether it failed to meet these attributes,” he says.
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In response to this question, Modern Education’s THS tutor Kelvin Cheung says students should have listed these attributes - high quality, authenticity, uniqueness, drawing power and activity options - and have discussed whether the terminal had achieved them.
“It’s necessary for students to have an in-depth understanding of these attributes and apply them to various case studies. They shouldn’t select this question if they have no ideas about the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal. The question also required them to ‘propose an improvement for each attribute’. There were so many things to write, so time management was crucial in this question,” Cheung advises.
Cheung told Young Post that Q2 in Paper Two was very complicated as students needed to spend a great deal of their time explaining multiple issues. “Q2 (a) asked candidates to identify each indicator of the Hong Kong Tourism Board’s Hotel Classification System 2010 and the needs of the target market. The question also required them to explain why a Medium Tariff rating is appropriate. I wonder if they would have been able to identify all indicators and explain the tariff in a limited time.”
Paper One was fairly straightforward, with 30 multiple-choice questions in Section A asking about current social issues related to the subject. A student surnamed Tsang said Q7 in Section A was tricky. It asked what the possible destination would be if an airline departed from Port Moresby and headed north.
“I couldn’t decide which of these options - Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and Shanghai in China - was right because both of them seemed to be correct. These places appeared to locate in the north of Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea,” Tsang said.
Other multiple-choice questions mentioned contemporary issues, such as the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil in Q17 and the mourning period for the Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej who died last year in Q13.