Source: My UM

A group of fresh-faced young people in flowing robes, microphone in one hand, bottled water in the other, showed visitors a promotional video and then took them to models of the different buildings, where they explained something about the buildings and eagerly answered questions from equally enthusiastic visitors. No. It was not a scene where real estate agents took prospective buyers to look at homes. Nor was it some average tour groups visiting a world heritage site in Macao with their tour guides. It was one of the guided tours of UM’s new campus.

In the first quarter alone, the new campus received 100 tours of over 4,500 visitors, from government officials to secondary school students, compared to around 2,500 visitors in 2013 before the inauguration ceremony. All these tours were guided by PR Student Ambassadors (PRSA) recruited by the Communications Office under the PRSA Programme, which was launched four years ago. For these PRSAs, each campus tour experience is unique and full of happy memories.

Curious Visitors, Happy Memories

Olivia Tang, a third-year student from the Faculty of Education, is a veteran campus guide, and for her, guiding tours on the new campus is a worthwhile experience, because of the “new environment, the chance to meet different people, and the excitement and happy memories from it.”

This February, Olivia guided a tour for the mayor of Shenzhen city and his colleagues. Despite being a little nervous in front of the government officials, she did her best and eventually earned high praise from the guests. PRSAs not only need to make thorough preparation for each campus tour, they also need to tailor the script to suit different visitors and, for tours on the new campus, fine tune the script to suit different routes and prepare as much interesting information as possible.

Kai Wong, a first-year student of accounting from the Faculty of Business Administration, started guiding campus tours this January, and he enjoys it very much. “Many guests are very curious about the new campus,” says Kai. “For example, when they saw working staff rowing a boat in the lake doing some kind of a test, they would ask if UM staff and students could row boats in the lake in the future. When we told them about the car parks, they would ask about their distribution.” But the guests probably have derived as much fun from Kai’s service as Kai has from them. For example, when he first started guiding campus tours, Kai sometimes would get a good natured laugh from the guests when he involuntarily repeated what he heard in the walkie talkie to them.

Challenges in Organisation

The campus tours are always full of happy laughter, but organising the tours are no laughing matter at all, especially given the huge size of the new campus and the need to coordinate with the various internal and external parties, including the contractor and security personnel. Esther Chan from the Communications Office, who is responsible for planning the itinerary for the campus tours, says, “We need to work with many different departments at the university. We need them to provide the most recent data and information so we can tell our visitors what’s special about our university. Campus tours and PRSAs are like a bridge, and we hope to present a positive image of our university through this bridge.”

Guided new campus tours are available Monday through Sunday, with four sessions every day, at 10:00am, 11:30am, 3:00pm, and 4:30pm respectively. For more details or online booking, please visit http://www.umac.mo/co/visit_us/visit.php.