A tourism education organization in Macao is seeking more prospective students from the mainland.

The Institute for Tourism Studies has prepared scholarships and internship opportunities for the arrival of students from the mainland, said Fanny Vong, president of the Institute at a meeting in Beijing on Tuesday.

In recent years, tourism has been a booming industry in China, with the country receiving more than 4.1 billion tourists from home and abroad and revenue from tourism reaching 4.13 trillion yuan ($634 billion) in 2015.

Against such a backdrop, Vong said the boom is expected to continue and the need for tourism talent, especially those with international vision and professional ability, will remain strong.

The institute, established in 1995, is a public body for higher education open to students across the globe. It now has about 1,500 students from 22 countries and regions, among them 182 from the mainland.

The institute offers six four-year Bachelor Degree programs, including culinary arts management, heritage management, hotel management and tourism business management. All courses are delivered in English.

"A crucial criterion for us to recruit students from the mainland, apart from their good results in the national college exams, is that they should have good English ability," said Vong.

Students can choose to, for example, spend about two-and-a-half years studying at the Macao campus, then a six-month internship abroad and finally the last year in another country finishing their studies for a double degree.

"We are cooperating with 85 education institutes and 500 tourism and service enterprises, which means our students will have a large number of opportunities and choices in their study or internship," she said.