🔒Two University of Southern Maine students help organize a Bermuda cruise — for credit

Haylee Munson, who is from Cumberland, and Michelle Elliott, a native of Steep Falls (Standish), are both 21-year-old students at the University of Southern Maine. Working with Professor Tracy Michaud Stutzman, they are laying the foundation for careers in hospitality and tourism.

On May 30, they will be part of a group of USM students on a weeklong cruise from Boston to Bermuda. Through an innovative program arranged with the backing of AAA-Northern New England and Holland America cruise lines, Munson and Elliott helped organize a special event for cruise passengers who booked through AAA. They had to form working relationships with tourism officials and venues on Bermuda. They organized the event while interns at AAA-Northern New England, and since then Elliott has been hired full-time by AAA. Mainebiz recently sat down with the students to discuss the workplace training they have received. An edited transcript follows.

Mainebiz: How did you each get interested in the hospitality industry?

Haylee Munson: A lot of aspects of business felt practical, but I didn't feel passionate about it. I was scrolling through the USM site and they had a brand-new [Tourism and Hospitality] program. I have always enjoyed when people came to visit me and loved to show them around and show them my way of life. The program is really practical and there are a lot of hands-on aspects. It just seemed like it was worth my time and money to study this. It was really something I could see myself doing.

Michelle Elliott: I worked at an inn in New Hampshire at the front desk, doing housekeeping and taking reservations. I was getting hands-on experience. I liked meeting people and hearing their stories. I was originally an accounting major, but then I took Tracy's community development class where we had to develop a [tourism development] plan for the town of Casco. It was nerve-wracking at first and we got a mix of reactions. But they were definitely interested in hearing ideas for developing tourism.

Mainebiz: Have you gotten specific skills from working as interns at AAA?

HM: They're so well-known and a big player in the hospitality industry — there's AAA anywhere you go. I'm interested in event coordination, so to be able to work with people who do it every day was really good for us, working with Eric Baxter and Janice Manly.

ME: Working at AAA, it was a great experience to see how they go about things. [Planning the event on Bermuda] was an amazing experience, to see how the industry can come together just for one event.

Mainebiz: For the upcoming cruise, what were the challenges of planning an event at a resort where you've never been?

HM: We had an entire event planned at the end of the internship and we had to scrap it on the very last day. The budget wasn't as high as we'd hoped. It taught us, never get too comfortable with a plan. It's always going to change. You always need a Plan B. You have to be mindful of the budget.

ME: We saw the challenges just with getting in contact with people in Bermuda. We weren't always able to speak with people or people wouldn't get back to us. We were also just trying to communicate what we were trying to do. We had to organize transportation, the venue, a lunch spot, a special cooking demonstration.

HM: In all of our classes a big theme is authenticity. If you're a traveler, you want to see the culture for what it is not how it's promoted or how it's marketed. For us it was really important to develop with an event that was a real representation of their culture, their food, their life. But having never been there, that was a real challenge. You need to appeal to people's need for comfort and safety, while giving them a real experience at the same time. We talk about that a lot in all of our classes, so it was important that we figure that out.