The third international meeting and the second learning/teaching/training event were held for the Erasmus+ project ‘Development of the Digital Marketing Competence of Adult Learners for Small and Medium-sized Tourism Enterprises (SMTEs) in Europe’ coordinated by Istanbul Medeniyet University and supported with a grant by the European Commission and the Turkish National Agency. The trainings were held on 18-23 June 2022 in Huelva, Spain.
Among the partners of the project are Professional Hotel Managers Association (POYD) from Turkey, PhoenixKM BVBA from Belgium, IACuDit from Greece, and Inercia Digital S. L. from Spain.
Within the scope of the mixed education activity of the project, trainings were given to the employees and managers of small and medium-sized tourism enterprises and students who have the potential to work in these enterprises on various subjects related to digital marketing in tourism enterprises. In the trainings attended by 2 representatives from each of the Belgium, Turkey and Greece country partners, certain issues were discussed for the development of tourism employment in small and medium-sized tourism enterprises and empowering tourism employees and managers in their digital marketing competencies.
The training topics included marketing and digital marketing principles, website design and quality, content marketing, digital ads, digital distribution channels, search engine optimization, social media marketing, mobile marketing, e-mail marketing, web analyses, and performance assessment.
In addition, at the project meeting, it was discussed how to develop training units and qualification framework related to digital tourism marketing. The meeting held in Huelva, Spain was attended by the project coordinator Prof. Salih KUŞLUVAN and Assoc. Prof. Özcan Erkan AKGÜN from Istanbul Medeniyet University, Professional Hotel Managers Association (POYD) President Ülkay ATMACA, Ramada Old City Hotel General Manager and Softotel Management company owner Serkan GÜMRÜKÇÜ, Celex Travel Dr. Mehmet BAHAR, Miracle Resort Hotel Deputy General Manager Mustafa ERGUN, and Tourism Researcher Dr. Leyla ŞIŞIK.
