Visiting Kranj

Excited to experience Slovenia and get on with our research, we arrived in Ljubljana on Monday where we spent the night at Hostel Celica. On Tuesday, we took the bus to Kranj where the tourism board of Kranj had set up a busy schedule for us with meetings and other arrangements for the next 24 hours. We stayed at Hostel Cukrarna which has a manager who really goes that extra mile to make you feel comfortable and welcome.

The arranged meetings included both the Tourism Board of Kranj, the tourism commision of the municipality of Kranj, Hotel Actum, Hotel Creina and a meeting at the municipality with the mayor and vice-mayors of Kranj. We also had more informal meetings with other stakeholders.

For now our findings include the lack of networking and cooperation between stakeholders, the lack of a focus on specific projects at particular points in time, and the fact that Kranj needs to find a way to use its rich cultural and historical heritage in order to differentiate itself from other similar cities. We have listened to the various stakeholder, and will now work towards creating innovative ideas and solutions to the above issues.

Overall, Slovenia has left us with the impression of having a lot to offer. The Slovenes are very welcoming, open and friendly, and the sights are great. We cannot wait to present our innovative ideas in April.

Regards,
Anna, Pia & Pernille

Meeting in the City Hall

We arrived to snowy Ljubljana on 20th of February. After collecting our belongings at the airport, Jezersek Catering Company provided us a three course lunch where they presented all kinds of traditional Slovenian food to our class.

After lunch, we drove further to Ljubljana and arrived to the Celica Hostel in the early afternoon. We found the idea of the hostel very innovative; keeping the original size of the former cells definitely provided us a different and rather unusual experience.

Taking the opportunity that the entire class is still in the capital, we spent the first evening in Ljubljana, having a delicious dinner in a pizzeria called Ljubljanski Dvor.

Tuesday morning started with presentations held by one of our teachers, who gave the local representatives a general introduction to the tourism stream at Aalborg University. Furthermore, one representative from the Ministry of Economy and another one from Slovenian Tourism Board introduced us to Slovenian Strategy for 2012-2016.

In order to make our future group work easier in the university, we conducted several interviews as part of our field research;
1. Meeting in the City Hall with the Marketing Director of Ljubljana Municipality.
2. Interview with two representatives and the General Manager of Ljubljana Convention Bureau, who introduced us to some of the challenges concerning Ljubljana´s leisure and business tourism.

During our stay, we had the chance to see the Castle in Ljubljana as well to have an absolutely delicious lunch up there in the restaurant.

As the task of our group is related to Ljubljana’s outskirts, we visited one of the more developed town called Kamnik. Besides meeting the local tourism representatives, we got to see the major sights in town and enjoyed even a rather unexpected tour in the mountains.

Last but not least, we could not miss visiting the Slovenian Coast in the end of our great adventure. Both Piran and Portoroz made a great impression on us, as well as the presentations in Portoroz Touristica.  The social activities organized by the local students gave us a great introduction to Slovenian Culture furthermore they were fun and very entertaining.

In all, we enjoyed every second of our stay and already looking forward to going back to beautiful Slovenia! :-)

Koper - Challenge gets challenging

Arriving in Koper by bus we noticed that by first sight the city does not come across as the most interesting place to be. However, it turned out that the unfavorable view from the bus does not at all cover what attractions Koper has to offer. The city took us by surprise and turned out to be both beautiful and charming with a rich history, functional port, Mediterranean climate and fantastic waterfront.

Our tourism challenge is to figure out a way to brand the port in relation to the city and hinterland of Koper. In Koper, we met with both a representative from the port and from the municipality/tourism board and it turned out our task might be quite difficult since it seems we are dealing with two very different approaches to tourism in Koper. The representative from Port of Koper stressed that it is not in the favour of the port to attract tourists in large numbers; on the contrary, the port is mainly interested in the locals and getting them to know of the ports work and of their sustainable approach. Here we were presented with the challenge of developing an existing event of the port called Port Day.

On the other hand, the representative from tourism board was interested in bringing more tourists to Koper outside of the normal tourist season. As we experienced ourselves while staying in Koper, February is indeed a low season for the tourism industry; we stayed all alone in an entire hostel and saw no other tourists walking around the city. Moreover, we were informed that Koper wants to develop tourism focused on culture and history and that the preferred target group should be families with children. We find this very unlikely to be combined and would therefore like to make some other proposals on the subject when we have had the time to work on the case further.

Although we had a great time getting to know Koper and its surroundings, by now it is clear that we are presented with two different tasks or challenges and will either have to choose between them or make individual proposes for the two stakeholders. More to come…