On December 8, Department of Tourism and Hotel Management hosted the 11th Bilkent Tourism Forum, bringing together representatives of key public and private tourism industry organizations, diplomatic corps, and higher education institutions. This year\u2019s forum took place at the Bilkent Hotel and Conference Center w\u0131th the theme \u201cTourism Diversification: Time for Revival.\u201d Across two sessions, the forum focused and invited discussion on the revival observed across various sectors within Turkish and global tourism in the post-pandemic era, and how tourism diversification emerged as a catalyst for this revival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The forum opened with welcoming remarks by Prof. Altay G\u00fcvenir, Dean of Faculty of Applied Sciences; Gonzalo Ceballos, Tourism Counsellor for the Spanish Embassy; Herv\u00e9 Magro, Ambassador of France; and Rector K\u00fcr\u015fat Aydo\u011fan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The morning session hosted four panelists: Sinan K\u00f6seo\u011flu, Cluster Manager of The Address Hotels in Dubai; Murat Altunay, Setur Ankara Branch Manager; Fikret Demira\u011f, Executive Chef of Banyan Restaurant; and Prof. Carlos Costa, University of Aveiro in Portugal. The panelists discussed new routes and trends in their respective fields. Prof. Costa elaborated on the \u2018visitor economy\u2019 outlook as well as other EU-wide policies and strategies to revive tourism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The afternoon session focused on tourism diversity and how diversification can be a sustainable solution in terms of earnings, employment and development. The panel comprised of a diverse set of speeches from \u015eamil Karaka\u015f, SVP of THY and Head of AnadoluJet; Dr. Genco \u00c7etinkanat, surgeon and director from G\u00fcven Hospital Group; Duygu Elakdar of Hi\u00e7 Urla, an olive-oil-themed sustainable restaurant in Urla; \u0130hsan Albo\u011fa and Selva Hansu of Tempo Tur, one of the country\u2019s oldest heritage tour organizers; Rengin B\u00fclb\u00fcl Turan of Paralian Deniz \u0130\u015fleri, a rising cruise organizer from \u0130stanbul; C\u00fcney Kuru, general manager of Aquaworld Belek; and Prof. Mehmet Erg\u00fcl, from San Francisco State University, California. The panelists shared inspiring success stories across medical, culinary, historical and sports-based tourism. The forum concluded with a speech by Prof. Erg\u00fcl on lessons learned over the last two years of higher education in tourism and how we need to diversify our educational programs to cater to new demands and sensitivities as well as specialization needs developed in the post-pandemic era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On December 8, Department of Tourism and Hotel Management hosted the 11th Bilkent Tourism Forum, bringing together representatives of key public and private tourism industry organizations, diplomatic corps, and higher education institutions. This year\u2019s forum took place at the Bilkent Hotel and Conference Center w\u0131th the theme \u201cTourism Diversification: Time[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80,93,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3321,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319\/revisions\/3321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}