Main Headline UTM Around the World

Exchange trip offers IFT students a European outlook on tourism

中文摘要 / Summary in Chinese

IFT recently joined hands with a Dutch institution, the Breda University of Applied Sciences, to help arrange the international exchange programme ‘Destination and Experience Marketing’, in the Netherlands. The participating students were hosted in the city of Breda from 30 June to 11 July where they took part in the programme, to support their studies on shaping destinations and  understanding how important the effect of marketing is on a destination.

A 13-strong group from various institutions of higher education went on the trip. Among the programme facilitators was IFT Lecturer Ms. Loretta Tou.

During the 12 days, the students attended lectures, took sightseeing excursions, joined in networking events and went on field trips. Volunteers recruited by the Erasmus Student Network, a European non-profit body which supports international exchanges, took the visiting students on a welcome tour of Breda to show them some attractions around the city, and introduce them to local culture and food.

The first part of the programme was about place-making and destination-shaping, the second part was an introduction to attractions and theme parks, and the final portion was about neuromarketing, a technique using medical technology to measure neurological responses to marketing.

The programme’s first segment included lectures on the concept of a smart city, and strategies for making a place attractive to live, visit or invest in. The visiting students discussed a variety of examples of place-making and destination-shaping, and looked into the question of service design from a customer’s perspective. The group went on a day trip to the Belgian city of Antwerp to visit museums, and to find out the reasons for the success of that city’s diamond trading business.

In the second part of the programme, students compared theme parks around the world and discussed their respective business models. The group took a trip to Germany to experience Phantasialand, a theme park near the city of Cologne that has been opened for more than 50 years. They also visited the old town in the city of Dusseldorf and learned more about German culture.

One of the purposes of the exchange with the university in the southern part of the Netherlands was to show students the factors that create a successful tourism destination, including the application of technology to marketing. In that regards, the last part of the programme allowed the students to focus on scientific research in marketing. The visiting students also undertook their own marketing experiments to gain experience in how scientific research is carried out.

The students had many opportunities to travel, apart from the trips that made up the programme. In their free time some students travelled to the Belgian capital, Brussels, and others went to the Dutch cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam or The Hague.