Saturday, 11.1.2014
For us, students, it all starts in the classroom… the difference is how and where it ends. This time, fortunately for us and thanks to our assistant Mr. Miha Lesjak who organized the presentations, it actually ended up in London, one of the biggest metropolitan cities in Europe, where we were experiencing the inner view into some parts of one of the biggest and most successful tourism markets in the world.
The walls of “the new classroom” were getting bigger, higher and wider every day as we kept meeting highly experienced and professional people from London tourism business world. They presented a great example of a high level of hospitality in tourism with their professional yet personal approach towards us as a group of students from Slovenia.
Our schedule throughout the excursion was quite full but we still had enough time left for ourselves to widen the perspectives in a different way by meeting different people, tasting various food and enjoying a pine or two.
Marcus Dickey Horley explaining about the extension of Tate Modern
Saturday was the last day of our excursion. In the morning, we gathered in front of the Tate Modern. We almost came late as we first went to Tate Britain by mistake. Mornings weren't our strongest point so I guess we just went to the nearest Tate we saw on the map. There are actually four Tate galleries in the whole Great Britain; Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St. Ives, two of them situated in London. In the gallery, we were welcomed by Tate Modern’s Access Projects Curator Marcus Dickey Horley, who took us on a tour through the gallery. He focused on the managerial point of the attraction rather than on the works exhibited which gave us a view into practical activities used by their management.
After Tate Modern we went to the City Hall where we’ve met up with Barbara Jamison, Head of Business Development Europe at London&Partners (London Convention Bureau), which is the official promotional organization for London and combines business, tourism and education. She was part of the organization team of the 2012 Summer Olympic games held in London which were the main focus of the presentation and our debate. We could see another perspective of the Olympics and their purposes if they are held, prepared and organized properly. In this aspect they really did an amazing job by focusing multi annual development of business, events and housing on world’s biggest sporting event.
In conclusion, experiencing London through educational point of view gives you a different perspective of its functionality than if coming only for entertainment purposes. We took a glance at its tourism functioning that can provide us comparison with significantly smaller tourism market that is Slovenian. From the standpoint of our potential resources I realized we only need to seek comparison in the field of hospitality and level of professionalism to improve our global tourism position. Minding the gap on the underground also encouraged us to mind the gap between being an engaged tourism student, being an uncritical tourist and being a professional tourism manager.
Our group in front of the Tower Bridge
Neža Cerar
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