For Educators
Do you have students who are interested in one or more of the many areas of Tourism & Hospitality careers?
The Maine Tourism Association is partnering with schools across Maine to give youths aged 16-24 opportunities to learn more about the Tourism and Hospitality industry. We at the MTA can help educate your school's students on internships, employment, college pathways, and careers within the Tourism and Hospitality industry.
We are pleased to provide this program to all Maine schools through a state-funded grant through December 2025.
Below are some resources for you on the programs available to your students. Please complete this form to learn more about how your school can benefit from our programming!
Click on any of the banners below to open the connected printable for you and your students.
A little about our program:
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We will coordinate with schools to organize MTA-hosted events/workshops for students, introducing them to the wide variety of job and career opportunities in the Tourism and Hospitality industry and giving them resources to learn more.
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As the program progresses, we look forward to connecting your students with some of the 1500 Maine businesses that the MTA represents. These connections may be through field trips, mentors & speakers, job shadowing, and internship opportunities. These internships, completed through various pathways, will financially compensate students between $350-$1050 (depending on their program).
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We will also connect students to current employment openings or Maine college programs that can help them realize their career goals in Tourism & Hospitality.
Feel free to email or print these promotional posters!
After your students have attended a presentation with us, please have them complete this form.
Students aged 16-24 can learn about this 75-hour internship here.
High school sophomores-seniors can learn
more about this 40-hour internship here.
Our internships are NOT jobs,
but labor laws still apply.
If your students went on a working-in-tourism related field trip for career explorations, we can cover your transportation costs!
Tourism for ME creates connections between Maine’s tourism & hospitality businesses and local 16-24 year olds throughout the state via in-school presentations, field trips organization, free training experiences, and paid internship opportunities. Since the program’s launch in early 2023, the Tourism for ME team has spoken to over 4000 students at nearly 60 schools. We have taken 650 students on field visits to tourism and hospitality businesses. We have trained over 100 students in a variety of hard & soft customer service skills and have placed more than 20 students into paid internship experiences. We have partnered with various organizations such as the Maine DOL and Maine DECD, Jobs for Maine Graduates, the Maine Community College System, Trades for ME, and Teens to Trails, to help build more seasonal and year-round learning and internship opportunities for Maine’s youth.
In both 2023 and 2024, Tourism for ME hosted a Workforce Development Summit, spotlighting current workplace tools and trends, helping businesses better understand the needs of Maine’s workforce populations, and bringing businesses together with job-seekers. Tourism for ME has also created a strong media presence with the goal to promote career opportunities and exploration throughout the tourism & hospitality industry. The organization’s YouTube channel hosts more than 50 short Voices of Tourism videos that provide a glimpse into many of the different work pathways available in Maine’s tourism & hospitality industry. In 2024, these Voices of Tourism videos had over 200,000 views on YouTube alone. In addition, a partnership with Maine Life resulted in three 25-minute episodes that provide a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to work in Maine tourism. Since their release, these episodes have had 15,000 views.
Through our work, Tourism for ME has helped Maine’s youth, parents, and educators better understand the value of the tourism industry to the state economy and gain a positive perspective of the career opportunities available while creating a pipeline for the future workforce into Maine tourism and hospitality businesses.