Win With the Lion - MBA student organizes conference in Lviv, Ukraine

Oksana Sydor, currently enrolled in the MBA in Tourism Management, is putting her education to good use. In her native Ukraine, she recently organized the “Win with the Lion” Tourism Conference, taking place from November 24 – 27, 2011 in Ukraine’s westernmost city of Lviv.

Taking on chief organizational duties, she brought together interesting speakers and participants from local, national, and international levels to discuss and reflect on important topics under the main conference theme “How to catch Trends and Travelers - Involve. Enhance. Present. Effect”.

Oksana impressively demonstrated how a conference can be successfully organized through the benefits of network links. Using the resources at her disposal, she tapped into the MU network of industry and academic partners to garner speakers and participants. In particular, she benefitted from her ties to the Vienna Tourism Board, as Dr. Wolfgang Kraus, former director and long-term supporter of MU, became one of her mentors and advisors for this new conference series, helping secure representatives of the cities of Vienna, Berlin and Graz for the speakers’ list. Furthermore, through contact and work with the Vienna Tourism Board, Oksana entered the international network of 'European Cities Marketing (ECM)'. The Chief Executive Officer of ECM, Dr. John Heeley, and Nick Greenfield from the European Tour Operators’ Association also presented in Lviv.

As Lviv will host the EURO 2012 soccer championship together with other cities in Ukraine and Poland, MU’s Prof. Dr. Andreas Zins presented on the “Economic and Social Impacts of EURO 2008”, to give insight into what’s in store for Ukrainian tourism next year. In addition, he contributed reflections on destination image building, travel trends and city marketing during panel discussions on the first and second conference day.

Win with the Lion comes at a crucial time, as Lviv is trying hard to position itself on the landscape of European city tourism destinations. Through the EURO 2012, many infrastructure impulses are triggered; among them the opening of a new airport terminal stands out as particularly monumental. However, apart from developing accommodation, restaurant and conference facilities, the organizational issues accompanying this development are still in their infancy. The conference succeeded in tacking these issues with the formation of the first partnership agreement among operators and the city of Lviv under the moniker of “The Tourism Alliance”, with the city additionally signing on to the national Tourism Association.

Details on the conference can be found at http://www.congress.lviv.ua/

Pictures from the conference are on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/win.with.the.lion