From sLOVEnia with love!

Our two weeks here in Portorož flew by too fast. This will be our last post (or at least one that we have to post). It is really hard to put all the emotions we have experienced into short text, because this place which was meant to be just our stop for summer school, has become a little bit like home. It has been fun and hard at the same time. We have made friends with whom we most likely continue communicating with and heard lectures about different approaches in theory, stressed about lack of internet connection, we found inspiration and spent sleepless nights preparing marketing plan for Salt Pans and Lepa Vida outdoor spa (ok, discussions took place while eating fresh watermelon, drinking wine and enjoying local food but still..). Thanks to IMCD (Innovative marketing of costal destinations) Summer School 2013 some of our friends, with whom we haven´t talked for a while, started communicating over the Facebook, asked questions about Slovenia and our bit crazy blog posts.

There were many places we visited but there is still lot to discover in Slovenia. We fell in love with famous Slovenian resort Portoroz and with historical center of Piran, visited rural areas with amazing nature and hard working friendly people. We are already used to have every day swimming breaks and to spend after lunch time lying on the beach. Every day we had new challenges, we’ve learned a lot during our summer school: to be innovative, to be a good story teller, to create a marketing plan and the most important thing we’ve learned is to feel Slovenia! We will miss the best ice-cream in the world. Cacao has stolen our hearts definitely with their wonderful choice of any imaginable flavors of ice-cream. We will miss our beach picnics and volleyball tournaments.

We will miss many things but we are so happy that we felt Slovenia!  

Time to say goodbye , but see you soon :)

 

 

 

Dear readers, this is our last blog for the IMCD Summer School in Portorož! I know…sniff, sniff. :'-( But before our final goodbyes we’ll fill you in with yesterdays and today’s events. So let’s start!

 Yesterday evening we celebrated Steffen’s birthday at the Coco bar and some of us even got an body paint. It was fun! This morning our professor Lorena Bašan from Croatia joined us here in Portorož to give us a lecture about tourism in Primorje-Gorski kotar County. 

 

Today was also for each group final day for finishing the great marketing plan for outdoor spa Lepa Vida and Sečovlje Natural Park because tomorrow is presentation and the closing party. The marketing plan is finished, embellished, arrayed and ready for show time. What is done is done. There’s no going back. 

 

We had a chance to visit today a secret place hidden 10 mintes away from center of Portorož . It is a eco-camp, an innovative idea from people who live their dreams and started a business with so much enthusiasm. It's basiclly a camp where you can sleep in tents, just in nature, away from crowd, people and stress. It is a perfect place to relax and escape away from the everyday life. 

 

To make the evening even better Kia and me decided to chill a little bit at the Cacao with the best ice-cream on the world ! 

 

Although we fell in love with Portorož, sLOVEnia and these wonderful people, we kind of want to go home because we miss our dear ones. We would like to thank to the organizers of IMCD Summer school, to the friendly people from hostel Korotan and to the lovely cleaning ladies from Turistica who are going on the deserved vacation.

   Farewell Slovenians, Dutch, Portuguese and Estonians. It was nice to know you all. J And of course, we hope to see you again and you are friendly all invited to visit us in Croatia. 

For the end, we prepared the „highlight“pictures and moments of our stay in Portorož !

 

 

 

“Well, here at last, dear friends,
On the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth.
Go in peace!
I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”


― J.R.R. Tolkien














  

  

    

Day filled with nature, presentations and love.

Hello for the last time!

This is our final post on this blog because we have one more day of summer school before it's over.

As almost every day we started at 9 o'clock in the morning. First we had lecture by Lorena Bašan about marketing of cultural tourism and sustainable tourism in Croatia. After that we had lunch in News Cafe as always the food was great.

Workshops today were long because we had to finished marketing plan. Tomorrow each group will present their plan. We are looking forward to see with what ideas came up the others participants.

After workshop Miha organised trip to eco camp. At eco camp we heard everything about them, how many people they can accomodate, what activities they are offering and the story of their beginning. We also got something to drink and we all sat aroud the camp fire and listened. It was a really great experience and it would be nice to spend a few days there in the future.

Tomorrow is end of summer school. So we would like to thank to all lecturer and organisers. This two weeks ended really quickly. Here we had nice time and we are happy that we get to know all of participants of IMCD. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
But this is not goodbye we still have one day. It will be special because we have gala dinner at Taverna and after that we will go back from where we started to News Cafe. We will hang out and then maybe even go to some party. We have to say goodbye in an appropriate way :)


Thank you come again!

Hello mates!

Well, let's beggin with the untold stories of yesterday. We went to have dinner at Taverna Restaurant near the Histrion Hotel. On our way we had a chance to see this amazing sunset that with you in the next picture! Enjoy :)

After our meal we headed back to our home base Hostel Korotan, to pick up some drinks to go to Steffen's birthday party. It was a great way to end our day... all together! Some of the IMCD students went to the club... the Portuguese crew decided to give themselves a good night of sleep... so we came back home!

Today we started with a really interesting lecture about Croatia, focused on the city Opatja and it's strategies in developing a sustainable tourism.

The afternoon was spent working hard on our marketing plans. Brains boiling everywhere! Tomorrow we will take the next step and present our brilliant and innovative ideas for the Sečovlje Park and Wellness Lepa Vida open air Spa.

In the evening Susana went with some other students to visit an Eco camp in hinterland, that we didn't have the opportunity to visit on the last Saturday trip.


People say: "Save the best for last"... guess what? they're right... the best part is yet to come! Tomorrow we'll have a gala dinner at the place we had dinner yesterday (ironic isn't it?) and then News Cafe is waiting for us, one last time!

As some of you may already realized... the summer school is coming to an end... can you believe that? Twelve days that flew by so quickly that we didn't even noticed.
Living in front of the beach, sharing experiences and meeting new people and their cultures, going for a swim in the morning...the afternoon or even at night, will be some of our most treasured memories. Portoroz will stay in our hearts for sure!

We would like to take this oppotunity to thank to the Summer School organization and all of the Slovenian students that worked twice as hard as us to give us a fantastic experience! THANK YOU :)

As for the other students it was also a pleasure meeting all of you and we hope to see you again soon in Portugal or in any other part of the world!

XoXo

Untill we meet again?

So, all good things come to an end.. Today will be our final blog for the IMCD Summerschool, but before we say our goodbyes, we want to fill you in with what we have been up to yesterday and today. Besides a lecture on sustainability in tourism from the Estonian tutors and students we have been working our asses of to finish our marketing plan in time for the final presentation which will be tomorrow.


Some of us had the pleasure of enjoying an amazing meal of Calamari’s with our Slovenian tour guide/ student Dino in Koper, which made them put a huge smile on their face ( so if you ever have the chance, definitely go and have dinner at Pizzerija Atrij in Koper :). The rest of us enjoyed a nice picnic on the seaside, and because of the birthday of our Dutch tutor Steffen. There was plenty of wine, which also put smiles on our faces!


When arriving in Portoroz nearly two weeks ago, we could never have thought that it would come to an end so soon.. We have experienced that what they say is actually true; Time flies when you’re having fun. Although the schedules where filled there was plenty of leisure time, and of course we made good use of it. Apart from that a lot of social connections where made, and it can be said that it might just hurt a bit when we have to say goodbye to everything tomorrow evening. And instead of saying goodbye we would like to say: until we meet again. Summer school has been a nice experience to learn about different countries and its beautiful locations and cultures, so it is sure to be said some arrangements will be made to come and visit each other’s countries.
So below we will provide with some images that will definitely be put on our human hard drive :)

Now the Dutchies would like to thank the organisation for this great experience. Moreover thanks to all the nice people we met and became friends with, during this short period of time. Untill we meet again!

From sLOVEnija with fairytales

 

This video is inspired by the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun"

“Once upon a time students from different countries came to Slovenia, to Portoroz. They gathered to participate in IMCD summer school, to get knowledge about innovative marketing, about other cultures and to find some new ideas for marketing. They couldn’t imagine how amazing it would be to have challenges and be innovative in everyday life. One day they as usually went to university to have lectures. The new challenge was waiting for them - the storytelling and opportunity to tell own story of an old salt storage houses. As we all know picture tells more than hundred words, so students had a chance to come up with a new story by taking pictures. And they let their mind to fly, they all told different stories about love, hard work and secret parties… and all got cast away, so this is the charm of storytelling. Everyone has his own story to tell, each destination has it’s own unique story…..”

Today we certainly have a story to tell you… We fell in love with Piran… So we come back here every now and then. Maybe it reminds us also a little bit of home, because of red roofs in the old town. We have lots of red roofs in the old town of Tallinn and if we climb up to the platform we can see hundreds of them by the sea. It is like a piece of home with better weather conditions. As we say, Estonian summer is like three months of bad skiing weather. Ok. It is not so bad and we actually enjoy our four seasons every now and then. But still ... There is something special and magical about Piran, it feels like time stops here… People live their simple lives even in the main square, you can see boys playing football, elderly men enjoying the beauty of playing chess and housewives hanging laundry to the balcony. It seems like people here really know how to enjoy their lives. And so do we in Piran!

Celebrate good times come on.

Hello!

Today Naja Petek who works in tourist agency has a lecture about promotion. We remembered video about Egypt which was made to attract Slovenians to that destination. The idea that Egyptians speaks slovenian is really innovative.

Today is also Steffen's birthday. So before we started we sing him a birthday song and give him little gifts. We hope he will have a nice celebration here in Portorož and we wish him all the best.

After that we had workshop were we had to tell story with pictures. In Portorož there are two warehouses that are not in use anymore. They used to secretly keep salt there. With pictures we had to tell a story how would we make them useful. After that we had again an amazing lunch at Faik's restaurant.

At 3 p.m. were again lectures by Heli Tooman. She was like yesterday very good, she was talking about wellness tourism, we also had a chance to write about wellness dimensions, how to assess and follow the holistic principle of wellness on developing and marketing of the wellnes destination. And we had so much fun, because Marit and Sander had some presentation about their hometown Parnu in Estonia. The presentation was really good and they had a sense of humour.

AAAAAnd theeen ;D and then when the night falls we will go out on the beach to hang out a little. And then Coco.

 I don't care.

Once upon a time...

Today our day could actually begin this way. After a midnight swim and a night of restful sleep, nothing better to wake up our minds than a very interesting and challenging workshop: storytelling! First we were introduced to some techniques of good story telling in the marketing industry. And then, because there´s no better way to learn, we create our own stories to tell others. The challenge was quiet interesting: to figure out how to use those abandoned warehouses nearby Turistika. And we came up with four great ideas! Definitely we should meet the real mayor of Piran!

In the morning we also had time to congratulate the lecturer from the Netherlands Steffen. It´s really a nice place and company to celebrate his birthday!

After a pasta lunch we returned to Turistika to learn more about Welness. Again with Heli Tooman, one of the Estonian lecturers, we did some exercises to practice all the theoretical information we were given. In between we had a presentation from our colleagues from Estonia that gave us some information about how to market Parnu as a wellness destination. It was really interesting. Then we had some more group exercises, namely to come up with a slogan for a coastal destination. Once again great ideas (we really need to be introduced to the mayor!)

As long as some of us needed to work in the Marketing Plan, we finished classes a little bit earlier than usual. But some of us could also find some time to go for an afternoon swim. It´s really great that the beach (ok, the sea) is literally across the street! We will miss it, and much more!

Now is time for having dinner: after more than a week having sandwiches, balcony and beach picnics we are really willing to have some “real” dinner, seated in a table, with fork and knife (for Susana and Maria is a spoon please, because they desperately want to eat a vegetable soup).

And that´s it for today, tomorrow we will let you know about Steffen´s birthday party at Coco!

Beijos

IMCD 2013 - Blog survey

Hello!

We have completed our first survey of the workshop 1: The Blog and here are the results of our first survey.

The question was: What is the biggest benefit of Summer School?

We had 10 answers and the most popular answers were:

1. Social network - 8 replies
2. Knowledge - 1 reply
3. Paid vacations - 1 reply

Meanwhile, prepare your last posts and stay innovative.

Blog manager
Sander Kalda

A little bit of everything

We will start our blog today with the short flashback on the yesterday evening.  We repeated the open-air dinner at the beach with a lot of food, some wine and beer. Considering that we get to know every day more and more so the evenings become more interesting.  We are already aware that this are our last night’s spent together so we already make plans for visiting each other.

 

 

 

 

Slowly we are also coming to the end of our lectures which were today really diverse. First we had a lovely and interactive presentation about the Story telling in Marketing. As a part of that we got a task to think about the story of two abandoned buildings in Portorož , which are actually a part of the cultural heritage because in the past they served as salt storehouses. Since today they no longer serve for this purpose and do not fit in the image of Portorož as a tourist destination, divided in groups we have developed ideas that could help revive the old buildings. There were some really innovative ideas and it would be really interesting if some of these ideas would really come true.

 

 

Today we also „witnessed“the birthday celebration of one of our lecturers so we prepared a small surprise for him and gave him a funny gift so he can remember this day.

 

 

After the lunch in the News café we continued with the lectures. It was time for Wellness and Estonia. Our friends from Estonia introduced us to the theme of developing the wellness tourism in the city Pärnu which is located in southwestern Estonia. Then we tackled the topic of wellness in general and we found out what is really behind the words wellness dimension.

 

 

We will finish our day by working further on our marketing plan fr the final presentation on Thursday. We are all excited to see what the other groups have developed and how they made their marketing plans.

And when the sun goes down it's beach time and maybe a trip to Coco bar in Portorož.

Greetings from

 

S, I, K & J

 

Happy Birthday Steffen, a story that will be told...

Before we will tell you about today, we will go back to yesterday. With the Estonians, and this time also with the Portuguese and some Croatians we had a Beach Picnic again.

This was a really great time, including lots of food and midnight swimming. People really enjoyed themselves, some more than the other, if you know what I mean ;)

All in all we came to the conclusion that one really needs beach picnics. If you haven’t done it yet, you should definitely go for it! 

Now coming to today, we had a Story Telling workshop. This did not only include a lecture and theory about this topic. No, no! To show what we learned we told some stories in the end of this workshop and discovered that being in love can be dangerous (be careful not to end up locked somewhere), or an opportunity - and not to forget: Did you know that we have mermaids in Portorož?

Besides this we also learned a lot about different promotional videos and how to assess them. After watching a few, you could really see the differences!

 

And since we are talking about storytelling we have another nice story for you. Well, to be honest I believe the main character wanted it to be a more secret story but we do not really care. It is the birthday of our lecturer Steffen today! Congratulations!

Tonight we will celebrate this with a nice beach picnic again, and afterwards go to the inner city of Portorož and celebrate this special day. As you can see here, Steffen dressed up for this day ;)

 

Right now we are having a lunch break. Nevertheless we definitely can not wait until it ends. You might wonder now, why that? Well, that’s easy. Our Estonian friends had to prepare a lecture for this afternoon and we can not wait to see it. Expectations are high, guys!

We are now going for a swim. We will tell you everything about the rest of this today tomorrow. Tot morgen!