Monthly Archives: July 2015

Tourism and sustainability – new report

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L'eroica Britannia 2015This new report on Tourism and Sustainability includes:

  • The most beautiful bicycle festival in the world L’eroica Britannia held at Bakewell in the Peak District
  • New EU project to support sustainability in the tourism sector – SMARTOUR
  • Totally Locally strategic marketing – a grass roots campaign being used in towns and villages across the UK
  • Great weblinks for visiting the Peak District, Staffordshire and Derbyshire
  • Tourism Management, Events Management and other courses you can study at Staffordshire University
  • Discussion of the Fairbooking campaign to support businesses
  • Some articles en francais

A print version of the report can be found here (23mb)

A web version of the report can be found here (1.5mb)

L'eroica Britannia 2015 
 L'eroica Britannia 2015

The forgotten among the forgotten

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THE reports on a study done for the HEA about the attitudes of part-time students at UK HEIs. P/T students feel like an after-thought at Universities, even including the OU (and, perhaps surprisingly, even more so at the OU). The way terms and classes are scheduled, deadlines, library loan periods — all are founded upon the traditional full time students, and part-timers just have to fit in best they can. It’s not a pretty picture, and although the main drivers for the dramatic decline in p/t are of course financial, this doesn’t help.

Nevertheless, the report doesn’t distinguish between undergraduate and postgraduate students — to me it reads as if undergraduate just assumed to be the big issue and postgrad is left to be an … after-thought. Full time pg numbers have held up pretty well over the past five years (other than a significant dip in 2013), but part-time pg numbers have been falling dramatically: 40,000 down from 2009 to 2013. P/T postgraduate students are the forgotten among the forgotten.

Numbers wise, they are hardly an after-thought, though: fully one third of all part-time students in the UK are postgraduates. Moreover, p/t pgs make up a much larger proportion of total pg numbers (just under half, believe it or not), than is the case in ug numbers (less than a fifth). Therefore, more of a problem, not less.

Sustainable Managers in the Tourism Sector (SMARTOUR) – EU project

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SMARTOUR wants to define the profile of the Sustainable Tourism Manager, as a qualified professional that can contribute to the economic, environmental and social development of the community where the organisation is located.

In order to achieve its goals the project will develop a training path and related tools aiming to equip tourist professionals with the right skills to become a Sustainable Tourism Manager. This will include knowledge and skills to establish a sustainable management plan for the facilities under management, and to undertake the actions needed to achieve sustainability objectives from the environmental, economic and social point of view.

The project foresees the use of accessible online tools to allow people to understand which actions are the most suitable for their facilities. This should also enable a wider rural audience to take part in the project.

The Sustainable Tourism Manager model will develop as a result of the experience of the partners and the analysis of the territory where they are based, to encompass different perspectives, locational requirements and traditions. The structure of the project is therefore conceived to respond to European principles towards a European Area of Skills and Qualifications through the shared experience of the partners and joint recognition of training outputs. Very high turnover of staff occurs in the tourism sector, due to the inability to professionally progress through a lack of training or qualifications – this project will address this issue.

The project will be looking to work with a range of organisations including those managing accommodation, facilities and attractions. Please get in touch with the lead if you would like more information or to be involved in the project.

Project start Autumn 2015           Project end Autumn 2017

The project is funded under ERASMUSPLUS Key Action 2 Strategic Partnerships.

Lead

Jon Fairburn, Professor of Sustainable Development, Staffordshire University

+44 1782 294094 jon.fairburn@staffs.ac.uk

Partners

Vicki Disley, Newcastle under  Lyme College, UK https://www.nulc.ac.uk/

Dr. Julie Scott, Touch TD, UK www.touchtd.com

Barbara Maria Casillo, Associazione Italiana Confindustria Alberghi, Italy http://www.alberghiconfindustria.it/

Gianluca Coppola, Eurocrea Merchant Srl, Italy www.eurocreamerchant.it

Pirkko  Varis, Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Finland www.tamk.fi

Mattheos Kakaris, CrystalClearSoft, Greece www.ccseducation.com

 

ERASMUS PLUS