Mövenpick Resort Kuredhivaru Maldives and Maldives Business School have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to promote higher education among the resort’s employees. A press release from the resort says the “initiatives under this MoU will play a crucial role in advocating academic education while raising employee productivity and helping them to form the habit of life-long learning.”
Cameron Steele, the resort’s executive assistant manager and Adam Umar, president of Maldives Business School formalised the agreement. This has made Mövenpick Resort Kuredhivaru Maldives the first resort in the country to collaborate with Maldives Business School to provide learning opportunities for their local employees.
Under this MoU, tuition fees for all bachelor degree programmes offered at the Maldives Business School, will be free for the employees of the Mӧvenpick Resort Kuredhivaru Maldives.. Movenpick Resort Kuredhivaru Maldives will also support Maldives Business School with several jointly organized trainings and seminars, scholarships, guest lectures, collaborative research, and internship, hospitality exposure and site visit opportunities.
“We are delighted to form this partnership between Mövenpick Resort Kuredhivaru and Maldives Business School, on what we trust will be an exciting and fruitful journey for both the resort and the school,” said Cameron Steele.. “Lifelong learning, and a culture of continuous improvement plays a huge role in our resort, and this partnership will go a long way in helping our “Heartists” (employees) get the best out of themselves, both personally and professionally. Taking advantage of the learning opportunities available through Maldives Business School, I have no doubt that our relations will become stronger. I’m really looking forward to working with the management and tutors of the school and watching our Heartists benefit and grow from this partnership.”
Adam Umar, president of Maldives Business School, added, “Mӧvenpick Resort Kuredhivaru Maldives and the Maldives Business School share a passion for higher education. This partnership will enable us to put our shared passion into practice. We understand that our country is in critical need of highly qualified and skilled people to lead and manage our hospitality and services sectors. The coronavirus pandemic has made us painfully aware of how limited our natural resources are and how vulnerable our hospitality industry is to outbreaks of disease. A way forward must include educating our young people to manage our resources efficiently and effectively to produce desired outcomes and creating an environment that will foster creative problem solving and ingenuity. Higher education will not only benefit the young people who receive it and their current employers but our entire country and its future prosperity”.
“At Movenpick Resort Kuredhivaru Maldives, we look at such strategic partnerships with academic institutions as a vital component embedded in our learning and innovation culture and this partnership is one of our key strategic initiatives of the talent & culture CampusConnect programme – an endeavor to ensure a productive and collaborative interface between industry and academia which is a critical requirement in the present knowledge economy. Such an interface between academic institutions and their research and development divisions is key to learning and innovation,” informed Vaibhav Garg, director of talent & culture at the resort.
With this alliance, local employees will benefit from free fee enrollment to any bachelor’s degree programme. While the free fee enrollment is only for local employees and for bachelor’s degree programmes, certificate courses and master programmes, Maldives Business School will provide some additional discounted packages for resort’s expat and local employees.