TourDev2 – Strategic Development of Tourism in Slovakia

So after several months of hard working 21st March 2014 marked the end of the last mobility organised under the TourDev2 project. That also means the official end of the project. This time we have organised 13 placements, out of that 12 in the UK and 1 in Malta. All in tourism industry, ranging from tour guides to consultancy services to regional development to tourist information centres to congress tourism. During the mobilities we have been working actively with five partners from the UK and one from Malta. The mobilities lasted from 7 weeks in the UK to 21 weeks in Malta. In this way I would like to personally say thank you to all the participants and to our partners and all their staff involved. Namely to:

Tony Blunden of Siawns Teg in Newtown, Wales, whose organisation hosted eight of our mobilities participants – Andrea Lengyelová, Dominika Bozsóová, Dominika Mokošová, Katarína Tanušková, Klára Kucejová, Lucia Spodniaková, Natália Michelová and Nikola Gregáňová. Thank you Tony and all your staff for all the effort and for making this stay a memorable experience to all the participants. Thank you also to the participants who had to cope with some initial confusing information but they coped so well and were a pleasure to work with.

Joy Reed of Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet in Ellesmere Port, England, whose organisation hosted Patrik Geletka. Thank you Joy, it is always pleasure communicating and working with you – I wish everyone was so responsive and open to accommodating our often strange requests. Thank you also to Patrik for being yet another valuable participant.

Malcolm Bell of VisitCornwall in Truro, England, whose organisation hosted Martina Hrašková. Thank you Malcolm, it was our first experience with you and I really do hope that yet another opportunity will come. Thank you also to Martina for being so open minded and raring, we were pleased to have you on board.

Katarina Longshaw of ABISSAL in Weymouth, England, whose small enterprise hosted Kuniko Vician. Thank you Katarina for now well established co-operation. Thank you Kuniko for taking your time of and using this mobility for the growth of our own organisation.

Martin Cook of The Visit Caerphilly Centre in Caerphilly, Wales, whose information centre hosted Terézia Gažová. Thank you Martin for establishing this new co-operation. Again, I do hope it lasts. Thank you Terézia as well especially for taking things into your own hands when it was most needed.

Ruth Vella of Events Club Malta, Malta, whose company hosted Ján Ferenčík. Thank you Ruth for finding in Ján a valuable addendum to your endeavours. To Ján we are wishing the greatest luck with his new job resulting from his stay and we are sure Malta will become his second home.

Well, I guess I said enough. We are aware that some things were not perfect but we took the greatest possible effort to come close to perfection. And will do so also in the future. Still we are thankful also for critical words. After all they help us to improve. Overall the mobilities were success but you can read about their evaluation from some of the testimonials of the participants (full report in Slovak only).

This project is funded by the Leonardo da Vinci Mobilities action of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union.