More than 20 Curtin University hospitality management students recently spent three days in Pemberton, working with the Pemberton Visitor Centre to develop bold new tourism concepts for the region — from luxury forest cabins and treehouse-style stays to a wellness retreat inspired by our timber heritage.
I worked alongside Professor Michael Volgger from Curtin’s School of Management and Marketing, together with members of the Pemberton Visitor Centre team, in particular Mark Hudson and Toni Dearle to help bring the students’ ideas to life and make the visit a success.
The students developed nature-based accommodation concepts designed to attract visitors while respecting Pemberton’s environment and local character, then presented them to local tourism stakeholders. Standouts included The Timber Retreat, blending Pemberton’s timber heritage with contemporary design and wellness experiences, and a treehouse-style forest-edge cabin concept with a self-guided canopy trail.
The fieldwork, part of Curtin’s Hospitality Management unit, gave students the chance to test their ideas against a real destination and the people who know it best — and gave the local tourism industry fresh thinking from the next generation of tourism professionals. It was, for everyone involved, a wonderful learning experience about tourism and hospitality, and a strong example of what’s possible when students take their classroom learning into the field.
Being Arthur 