Developing new ideas for regional companies

Kleve/Kamp-Lintfort, 15 March 2016: Every year students in the Sustainable Tourism bachelor’s programme take part in a practical workshop that examines real-world problems faced by the regional tourism industry. Lower Rhine companies submitted a wide range of project suggestions and business conundrums for students to explore and analyse with respect to their sustainability, among other aspects. At the beginning of the winter semester, students voted on their favourite project ideas to focus on for the following three months. In that time, students learned not only the ins and outs of the project topic, but also how to interact with clients in a professional environment, how to organise and coordinate a team, how to take a project idea from the drawing board to reality, and finally how to present project results to clients.

In this year’s project students developed two new concepts for detective tours, including marketing materials and comprehensive cost calculations, for the Tourist Info Center Kranenburg, a German border town located close to Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The students also developed a concept for an all-inclusive hiking tour through the Reichswald forest in Kleve, including a wine tasting in nearby Groesbeek (NL) and an evening dinner in the Caféhaus Niederrhein.

For the B.C. Koekkoek-Haus museum in Kleve the students developed a bicycle daytrip through the surrounding Lower Rhine countryside, much of which was used as motifs for paintings hanging in the museum. Students also developed a two-day stage programme for the annual Fairy Tale Festival in Kranenburg. The programme includes the help of talented young performers from kindergardens and schools around the area, a professional fairy tale narrator and medieval-style musicians.

Margret Sanders, deputy managing director of the disabled-workshop Lebenshilfe in Kleve, was very excited about the results of the student-led projects: “The students had the foresight to survey residents in the city of Kleve, in assisted living homes and experts at the Rehacare trade fair on self-determined living. The results are inclusive tourism concepts that can be used to develop even more products for our own inclusive travel organiser Vivo Reisen.”

Many other companies and organisations benefited from students’ newly developed concepts as well, including Burg Zelem, Kleve Marketing, Messe Kalkar, the Shoe Museum in Kleve, Lamatrip.de, the township of Issum, Landhaus Beckmann, and the historical Wind Mill Society in Kalkar