Strong-bow Project has conducted a three-day workshop at Arba Minch University’s Video Hall from 29th to 31st October, 2014. Around 18 participants from its four partners, Addis Ababa, Jimma, Mizan Tepi and Arba Minch Universities participated in the workshop.
The project which came into being to take into consideration the four priorities i.e. to focus on gender, response to market demand, use of local expertise and organizational learning has multiple objectives.
It has the mandate to formulate multi-disciplinary training and research plans, enhance staff quality and quantity, improve curricula and training approaches, improve research skills through interdisciplinary demand-driven action research; establish sustainable financing mechanisms, strengthen networking between various partners and enhance organizational and coordinating capacity of the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre (Ho-AREC).
Capacity building of its partnering institutions mainly to strengthen tourism sector particularly in Ethiopia, has been its prime task and the ongoing workshop was organized in that perspective with, Dr Rene Haarhoff, Head of Tourism and Event Management from Central University of Technology, Free State, South Africa and Addis Ababa-based consultant, Dr Ayalew Sissay as its resource persons.
Steering the workshop, resource persons enlightened participants on entrepreneurship, service excellence, teaching skill, branding etc. They dwelt upon key invariables like tourism marketing, characteristics of tourism marketing, consumer market behavior, segmentation, brand positioning, designing and managing products, pricing products, distribution channels, promoting products and destination marketing.
Video clips were used to make teach marketing techniques easier and to highlight general mistakes committed by different players in the market. Class-room visit, case study, sharing and group activity along with discussion followed by self-evaluation was also the part of workshop.
Strong-bow Project’s national-level coordinator, Rawda Seman and Dr Solomon Markos from Arba Minch University were involved in its organization.
By Corporate Communication Directorate (Philips Joseph)