Student projects

How do we give students the opportunity to shape the future of tourism?

ETFI has been part of NHL Stenden’s Leisure & Tourism Academy for ten years. This means that we are inextricably linked to education. At the end of the year, it is time to look back and see what we have done. In this case: what is the current state of affairs when we look at our (structural) contribution to education? In this blog, we will briefly discuss how we introduce students to the world of tourism research.

Coolhunters give you tips for value creation in the leisure sector

It is very important for us to constantly map and follow innovative leisure and tourism organisations. For the first time, we collaborate with “coolhunters”. These are young people who are constantly mapping striking developments. Young people are your future customers. You can make your organisation future-proof by bringing their valuable interests into your conceptual development.

Customer journey of the international tourist in Fryslân

We supervise three groups of Leisure & Events Management students from NHL Stenden University in their research on analysing the customer journey of the international tourist in Fryslân. This involves a lot of different touch-points and therefore, the customer journey was divided into 3 processes with corresponding research questions.

The tourism professional of the future

Due to our active involvement in tourism education at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences and other universities across Europe, we often hear the concerns whether the popularity of tourism education will decline in the near future due to the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry. Tourism has a unique power to play a major role in the recovery efforts in the post-pandemic era. These efforts, however, need to be managed well. This calls for resourceful professionals who understand the dynamics of such a complex industry as tourism, and dare to think out of the box to find innovative solutions

Tourist Information Center of the future

Tourist Information Centres (TICs) have always been considered an important visitor service facility, actively promoting their destination and providing reliable information to tourists. Threatened by the evolution of technology and due to the lack of visits, many physical TICs had to close their doors. Our project The Tourist Information Center (TIC) of the future represents an internal advisory report for Kennisnetwerk Destinatie Nederland and has been established by six students completing a master’s degree in International Leisure, Tourism and Events Management at NHL Stenden in Leeuwarden.

Supporting destination management through GPS based predictive modelling

In the last decennia, both tourism and leisure industries have created significant benefits to the economic, cultural and social development of destinations around the globe. Mankind has a history of using innovative technologies to counter current day challenges in the field of sustainable development of destinations. Therefore, I have decided to write my BA thesis in an attempt to reveal the potential of predictive GPS-modelling for European destinations according to tourism professionals.