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!

 

Feeling well(ness)…

After a lazy Sunday we woke up feeling great today. So the first lecture of the day couldn´t be more appropriate. The Estonian teacher gave an excellent and very interesting lecture about wellness and wellbeing tourism. We even had the opportunity to know more about our own wellness habits. Surprise, surprise… some of us aren´t that healthy! Many things to improve in order to become more healthy.

And after that we had our daily guilty pleasure of this summer school: fried potatoes! In Portugal we use to say: do as I say, don´t do as I do!

The second lecture of the day was from the Dutch teachers. Steffen and Konstantin talked about how a place becomes a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and presented us the case study of the Wadden Sea. Professor Steffen’s lecture was focused on the economic effects on tourism and the great importance of cooperation between all the stakeholders in tourism, even more when we are talking about a place that wants to be part of that list.

The second part of the lecture from the Netherlands teachers was focused on World Heritage Sites of UNESCO, and the specific conditions that a place needs to achieve in order to get that nomination.

Professor Konstantin gave us some highlights about branding and the differences between place branding and destination branding. 

As the lectures finished at 5h30, we decided to go the beach (meaning get across the street) to get some tan and enjoy a refreshing swim. We stayed there for almost two hours and then we came back home (we already refer to Hostel Korotan as our own home) to get prepared to our picnic at the beach with Estonians, Slovenians, Dutchies and Croatian guys. It´s getting usual to go have dinner outside.

The picnic was great, Dino and Sander were having very romantic moments sharing food… Just see for yourselves. Unfortunately we had to return to the hostel because we need to come here to let you know about our day. As long as we are almost done here, we’re still thinking of going back and go for a midnight swim under the moon.

See you tomorrow

Beijos

From health to brand.

Good evening!

Today was monday the worst day of the week, but for us not! Because we had amazing lectures by teachers from Estonia. Heli Tooman and Gristel Leetma were talking about wellness. They gave us tasks like which target group is connected to wellness, what is their motivation and expectations. We also filled in personal quiz about health. After that they showed us quotes of famous people so we searched for one more that we like:

"My main goal is to stay healthy because when you're injured you realise how lucky you are to have your health." - Maria Sharapova

After lecture we had lunch and after that we had another lecture. Steffen Fokkemma was presenting UNESCO mainly focused on Wadden Sea. He showed us one video, brochures and presented everything about Wadden Sea. Konstantin Gridnevsky presented what is brand and everything connected with this. He prepared us a little different quiz at the the end and the winners were rewarded with waffles from the Netherlands.

In the evening we had more free time than usually so we decided to go shopping in Koper. On the way we listened to our favourite boy band from childhood Game Over. In Koper we spend more than we should because everything was so pretty. On the way home we also listened our still favourite Slovenian group. You can also listen them here:

GAME OVER - Igra za 2

Classroom time!

Monday fun day in the classroom! After the exploring time yesterday, today has been time for sitting in classroom and learning something new. And we actually have learnt something. We are interested in sharing that knowledge with you. So, let’s start.

The first topic was including developing and marketing a destination (a region) as wellness destination by lecturers Heli Tooman and Gristel Leetma. Did you know that is possible to define wellness as a balanced channeling energy, the long acceptance of yourself? It is the integration of body, mind and spirit. You know, it’s all about individuals and it can become a more successful lifestyle. 

Heli Tooman

By doing some kind of a personal wellness quiz, we actually found out if we are healthy people in all dimensions or we could use improvement in some areas. It turned out that we all have a well lifestyle, but the conclusion is that there is always space for making some changes to take care better care of ourselves. Here is an example of the quiz, you should try to fulfill it (be careful, because of the problems with photo shooting, it is necessary to zoom in the picture). :-) 

Personal Wellness Quiz

Personal Wellness Quiz

And do you know what is shown on this photo? No? It is the Wadden Sea, a beautiful and dynamic landscape and it was placed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO in 2009. Wadden Sea was proposed by the trilateral cooperation of Germany, Netherlands and Denmark. Speaking of World Heritage List, did you know that there are around 980 heritage sites in the world? At least, Konstantin Gridnevsky and Steffen Fokkemma told us so. ;-) 

Wadden Sea

Konstantin's lecture was about brand, more exactly, about place branding and place branding image. Kind of confusing, but we must admit, his explanation was really good. 

Steffen Fokkemma

Konstantin Gridnevsky explaining :-)

But enough talking, in our opinion, now it is time for some relaxation. Let's go to the beach!