ECM Summer School: a perfect meetings industry training “package”
51 delegates participated in the silver anniversary of ECM’s annual Summer School. The venue for this uniquely challenging and rewarding educational event was the Polish city of Cracow from 27th to 31st August 2011. Two participants were asked to give their opinion on the training programme: Malena Rendahl (Project Manager, Hotel & Conference Booking, Destination Jönköping) and Lauri Kurs (Sales Manager, Nordic Hotels OU/Tallinn CVB).
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What was the reason to come to ECM Summer school?
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Malena: To learn more about the industry, meet new people from the same profession and to create new contacts. Another reason was to learn more about how we can develop our daily work and our destination in the best way. I heard about ECM Summer School through my colleagues and it was a great opportunity for me to develop in my profession.
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Lauri: A colleague of mine suggested taking part and, since I work for a hotel, I was curious to find out how everything looks from the other side – from the organiser side. Choosing a destination, contacting local CBs, what’s important and what’s not… A good tip that I brought back home was that hotels shouldn’t be too eager to take contact in an early phase.
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| Malena Rendahl |
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What do you think is the biggest benefit of ECM Summer School?Malena: I gained insight in that there are similarities within the meetings industries of courses but that there are differences as well. What works in for example Jönköping might not work in a major city or a smaller town. It was very interesting to exchange experiences and I feel inspired in my every day work.
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Lauri: ECM Summer School provided me exactly what I was looking for – insider perspective. Since I don’t work with associations on daily bases, it gave me a positive kick to see how huge the market actually is – at least for a moment it seemed that from now on getting a conference in my town/hotel is as hard as fishing in a fish farm.
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| Lauri Kurs |
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What part of Summer School will be the most useful for you in your everyday work?
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Malena: …what is important with a bid or an offer to a customer and learning about the differences about convention bureaux, PCO´s, DMC´s and the relationships between the different organisations. I really enjoyed hearing about AMC since it was relatively new to me and worthwhile investigating.
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Lauri: I wouldn’t point out anything particularly – for me it was a good experience, some presentations were more useful for me and some less, but in general the ‘package’ was good. What I would suggest to add in the future would be a presentation about time management – I need it myself, but it’s useful for everyone.
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