Meetings' week in Ljubljana

Juan Lopez, young Spanish entrepreneur discovering Slovenian tourism (more pictures)

My friends, here I am again; I am going to tell you about the things that I did last week. I was in Ljubljana and I had different meetings:

On Monday morning I had a meeting with Barbara from Humanitas. Do you remember that I had told you about her in my blog? She told me about the things they do in Slovenia and in different countries of Africa (Ghana, Burkina Faso…) and we were talking about the “Responsible Tourism”. But what do we understand under this term? This kind of tourism does not harm neither natural nor social environment of the local communities visited and aims to contribute to its economic, cultural, social and environmental sustainability. It also thrives to connect tourists with local cultures and raises awareness on the problems local communities face. Within the project they have developed seven workshops for tourists (traditional weaving workshops, workshop of bronze making crafts, cotton workshop where participants visit organic cotton farms and get acquainted with the cotton situation in Burkina Faso, mango workshop, local beer production workshop…). Humanitas does not organize travels to Burkina Faso but aims to include workshops into already existing tourist programmes of Slovenian and foreign travel agencies. Moreover, it aims to raise awareness among Slovenian tourists and travellers on the importance of responsible tourism and to encourage Slovenian tourist agencies to include main responsible tourism principles (collaboration with local organizations and communities, financial transparency of collaborations, fair payment of local guides and partners, financial investments in social and development community projects, use of environmentally friendly transport etc.) into business strategies. The meeting was really interesting and I will look into Responsible Tourism in Spain.

On Wednesday afternoon, when it snowed strongly, I met Simona Bandur, journalist of the daily newspaper Delo. We met in Preseren Square and we had coffee in the Kavarna Union. She wanted to interview me and she asked me why I came to Slovenia, what the program Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs was about, how I felt here, what my future plans were etc. Yes, we talked for about 30 minutes and yesterday the interview was published in the newspaper! You can read it here (in Slovenian, sorry!) :)

On Thursday and Friday Slovenian Forum of Innovation took place at the Convention Centre Gospodarsko razstavišče in Ljubljana. I went there with Tina (Zavod Novi turizem) who was there to present the project Bank of Tourism Potentials in Slovenia. They were chosen among 50 innovations to be presented at this fair. There were different exhibitors: electric cars, airplane, strange cellos... On Friday morning me and Tina presented the programme Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs at a workshop hosted by Sebastjan Rosa (my Intermediary Organization). I told them about my excellent exchange.

On Friday evening me and my roomate Michiel went to the Etnographic Museum and later we watched the turning on of the Christmas Lights... Later some friends joined us and we had dinner and we enjoyed Ljubljana at night. My dear Ljubljana, how much am I going to miss you when I go...!