Walk'n Talk: Behind the scenes of Tourism and Leisure Management
Hi, I'm Sibila, and I'm a student at the IMC Krems today I have a very special assignment. I'm going to do an interview with my former program director Professor Claudia Bauer- Krosbacher and I'm really excited to see her again, so let's go and do it. Hi Sibila! It's so great to see you again, how are you doing? Hi! Oh, you can call me Claudia, now you are one of our alumni of the bachelor program and because of that you can call me Claudia. So I want to show you our second historic building and it's a perfect combination of modern infrastructure and historic elements. You want to see it? Yeah, sounds great, let's go! So and why are we going to this other building ? Um I want to take you there because first of all they have really good coffee, they serve excellent food, and it's a historic place so there is a wonderful atmosphere there and um yeah I can all answer all your questions. Okay sounds great. Um well I know you already, but our viewers don't so, could you introduce yourself please?
Yes, so I'm the program director of the Tourism and Leisure management program, I actually, I'm from the western part of Austria, I'm from Tirol, I'm grown up there my parents used to have a hotel, so I'm basically grown up in the hospitality industry and then my parents decided to send me to the hotel management school in Innsbruck and I really enjoyed myself there and so i from an early stage on I realized that I have really a great passion for tourism. So after or during my hotel management education I already had the opportunity to go to France, so I did an internship there in Paris, in a travel agency, and that really inspired me. So I thought okay, I want more of this and after my graduation I decided to yeah to improve my French. So I went to Geneva is the French-speaking part of Switzerland I again worked there in a hotel and so when I came back then to Austria, I wanted to go to South Africa at the time but unfortunately it didn't work out, so I needed a plan b and my plan b was stand to go to Italy. Because I also like Italy very much, it's a great country yeah wonderful, and so I was there as an au pair and after that, I also wanted to work there so I worked at the Lake Garda, that's in the northern part of Italy. And I worked in a fine dining restaurant there over the summer, so when I
came back then again home I thought: "okay now maybe it's time to study". And I decided to study business again, with the focus on tourism and I studied at the university of Innsbruck and after my studies I had the chance because I worked as a project assistant there at the university. So after my studies I decided to go to Ireland because working as a project assistant that really brought me in touch with research, so I realized that research is extremely interesting and I started to pick up the topic of cultural tourism and developed a really great interest into that area. So I went to Ireland, I got a scholarship for a PhD, so I spent four years doing my PhD in Dublin. Actually at the Dublin institute of technology and uh I worked also in the tourism industry at the weekend. So uh I was always very busy and uh yeah and then I thought it's time to come back to Austria, so I actually started to work here at the IMC, first as a professor and then now it's already three years I got to offer uh to do or to work as a program director. Well I think this has been one of the longest
introductions, you have a lot of experiences, you travel so much. Yeah, I love it and I really like to travel around the world to meet different cultures. Tourism is all about it, this is what tourism is about and this is why you need languages and I think you just need to be an open-minded person and it is so enriching and when you travel you learn so much about yourself. I think yeah it's very important also for your own identity I guess, yeah, great. Well we are right now we are almost there. Now look at this isn't that great, beautiful, look at this combination, modern architecture and historic building and the Gozzoburg here actually is one of the oldest buildings in Krems. So this makes it also very important for cultural tourism, of course.
So now I would like to start with the questions like focusing more on the study program and my third question is. What makes the tourism bachelor so special? We um need to go back to the start of it, um, more than 25 years ago we established this English-speaking program. It was the first in English in Austria by the way and since then, we were able to build up an international network.
So we collaborate with so many institutions around the world, and so we have really great competences when it comes to you know, cooperation international building up this international network and we have lecturers from all over the world and um yeah. I wonder why have you decided to study tourism in Krems? Well when I first started browsing first of all, it was a reputation, this bachelor has a great reputation. I've read stories from a lot of students which are very successful and some are even teachers now at IMC which I think it was very cool and then personally.
Also, the international part of the bachelor you know I got to learn Chinese and Italian you know, and I got to be with people all over the world and that was for me very important and it was a great part that made the experience a lot better. Yeah, I think what really separates us also from other study programs in tourism is that we have an excellent curriculum we do not only look at tourism in Austria, but we take this international perspective so we want to see what's going on around the world. You mentioned the languages and this is also in my opinion extremely important for anyone who studies tourism and again this is what we offer and what is outstanding in our program so you can choose from five different languages. So by the way, which language did you choose? I chose Chinese and Italian yeah. Okay, Chinese was a brave decision yeah, but I made it through so yeah.
It wasn't a bad decision, it was great that I got the chance to learn that language, yeah. Great so yeah international focus, you mentioned that this is really something very important nowadays so we really want that students work all around the world. We prepare them for an international career and now have a look at this. Isn't that great here? So Claudia, could you tell me a little bit more about the focus areas of their bachelor program? Yes certainly well it all starts in the first year with some basics in business so for example, we look at accounting, principles of management, marketing and, but I also have to highlight we have this strong focus on tourism of course yeah. In semester two, we already uh look at event management for example, so we go more and more into specialized areas within the tourism industry. So in semester three then we also highlight for example tour operators. In
semester four, in the full-time program students would go on their internship so they can go anywhere around the world, but we can talk about this then in more detail. And then in semester five and six as I said it comes more into let's say more specialized areas. So we would look at sports tourism, we would look at cultural tourism, we would look at wellness tourism, so the more you move up the semesters, the more we go into these specialized areas and what I also have to highlight is in the second semester we lay the foundations for hospitality management and also destination management. And then in semester five you can specialize in one of these, so depending
on your preferences you can either specialize in destination consulting or hospitality consulting and we talked about the languages earlier so this is also a very important part of the curriculum of the study program, that you choose the language out of the five that we offer. And so when students then go on their internship on their so-called practical training semester they tend to go in a country or to choose a country or a destination that is in line with with their language skills so that they can deepen their knowledge in this aspect. I think it's also important to mention that we run the tourism and leisure management program as a full-time study program but also part-time, so let me explain the differences. In the full-time program, we would have classes from Monday to Friday and some of the courses would happen also online, still online. And in the part-time study program, your classes would start Friday afternoon and then Saturday all day long, so it's in the more condensed version that you would study. The
difference is also that in the full-time program, you would have one dedicated semester for your internship and when you go for the part-time version then you would study and work as you go along, so, you don't have this internship semester as such, but the courses are exactly the same. Well now I would like to go back a little bit about the focus areas. What about sustainability and digitalization, how do we apply those in the study program? Yeah, thank you, that's a very good question. Yeah, it's very important to mention this because what we learn from the development also in the industry. So sustainability and digitalization, these are the two trends
at the moment these are priority areas we have to focus on. And so sustainability we start to address many many issues around sustainability already in the first semester, so we have a special course on this well it's called sustainability and ethics in leadership, so we would also go a little bit into leadership. And then, I also have to say that sustainability is so important that we also of course take this on board in other courses, so for example in cultural tourism we cannot talk about culture and cultural highlights, cultural attractions, attraction management without addressing sustainability issues. The same is true for event management, so this is something that forms really an integral part of the entire study program and of course, we have also in one of the higher semesters ,then we have a course dedicated to sustainability in tourism and apart from sustainability we also look very much on developments with regard to digitalization. So we have a course on digital marketing and the content would go into how to create a website, so what is important how to create the website, but also what our key performance indicators for a good website.
so how can you administrate all of this, and then we also have a course on digital media. So that would go into yeah, how to use social media for example for marketing, for marketing certain tourism products so the two of them are really important. Okay so that's really the framework of the study program, but I'm going to ask you how did you experience that? Well, for me was a very good experience because I had a very small group, we were only 60 people so it was very easy to follow the lectures even more to talk to the teachers and then also to get to know your classmates you know, because if you have 200 people then you're not you're not able to get to know everybody and we formed a lot of friendships that I still till this day have. And also the group works also help a lot with the dynamics of how to work with other people, so it was a very very good experience overall yeah. Thank you, i'm glad to hear that actually. So this is really one of our aims that we also train you in communication skills and that we have a lecture on group dynamics so that people learn how to work in a small group but also how to work in an international group and so I think yeah as we move along uh, this is something that you can really profit from and uh that has that is of great personal value in the end, isn't it? I mean at the end of the day we're talking to other people every day and I think it's really important to know how to present yourself and how to talk to people, so for me at least personality training was very useful yeah also because they help us also with job interviews, just class presentations so yeah. Yeah, and what I also want to highlight is um that we have really great lecturers for this, so
most of them are practitioners so they work in the industry themselves, so they work in the specialized areas on a daily basis so and that's why they are also able to pass on this information to our students. So for example event management, so we have people who have their own event management agency so that's where they then can really report about their everyday business, so did you enjoy that? Yeah, it was very helpful because then you can ask about real life situations and really accept questions because they work there, so they're gonna know how to answer. So for me that was very important to be able to ask questions about the job that i'm actually going to have to do at some point, you know. I also wanted to ask, are the teachers then also international?
or are they all Austrian or? Well, some of them are Austrian of course, but we have a strong focus on internationality and so we have the opportunity to really collaborate with people from all over the world. For example, we have an excellent lecture from Canada it's Peer Christian Fritz, he is CEO of a west Inn Hotel and so he's a native speaker but the English native speaker of course and i think it's not only English speaking, the English-speaking community that really sets us apart maybe from other study programs. It's this multicultural let's say group that we have not only when it comes to lectures but also of course when it comes to students. But from the lecture side I can only say we have people really from all over the world. So I mentioned that Christian from Canada, but we have for example José Garcia from Mexico, Denise is from California, we have Giancarlo of Italy, he will join the team now very soon he's from Italy. So we are a bunch of really international people working together, are coming together here in Krems. It's very interesting because business also works different in every country, so it's very useful to have an input from other regions I guess. Absolutely so that's the internationality and this
is really in our DNA. So now I would like to move forward into a little more the further semesters and i wanted to ask you about the practical training, how does the process work? Is there help from university? some locations? Absolutely so, uh of course, as I mentioned before students they have already sort of an idea of where they want to go so what kinds of destinations they want to go to and so, but they do get the support from the career service, so we have a career service that we offer and they help you in writing CVS, letters of motivation and since we have been working with so many institutions and companies all over the world, basically uh where students go on a yearly basis, so we send students there every year, and so we collaborate with these people and if we know that someone really wants to go to Ireland we would immediately know, okay we have three companies there, and why don't you ask there. So of course we have this great network and that is extremely supportive for our students. Are there any other international opportunities in the program? Yes definitely so you can go on exchange in the third semester when you study full-time, in the part-time study program you can also do this in the fourth semester so going on exchange means that you study an entire semester at one of our partner universities and we have this great international network we have, so we have we collaborate with for example let's start in Asia. We have Hong Kong Polytech in Hong Kong then, we work with the Madison University in Bangkok, if you go to Europe we have several partners, but I'll just mentioned the highlights, maybe we collaborate with the university in Perugia, in Florence then a lot of students like to go to Spain of course, so we have great partners there at the Canary Islands for example but also university of Málaga.
We have an excellent partner in France it's the Kedge Business School, it's one of the best business schools in France so really top-notch and if we cross the Atlantic then I should mention Prince Edward islands the so-called Holland College, great partner Florida State University and South America, we also have some partners there for example university in Mexico and the university of Ignacio de Loyola in Lima. So we have great opportunities really all around the world and I should also mention, or I should highlight that we offer double degree programs, the double degree means that you study an entire year at this partner university, so we offer these double degrees with two different universities it's Haaga Helia in Helsinki in Finland and with the Kedge Business School in France, they have a campus in Bordeaux, but also they're going to open a new one in Marseille. The double degree is really something unique, it's really for our high potentials, let's put it this way and because you really study an entire year abroad and in the end you get this double degree which is a great benefit for your career of course yeah. So what can your students expect after graduation? Well, the majority of our students or of our graduates they go on with the master's degree so they had for example for marketing masters here at the imc we also have some students who decide to go for a gap year and they work in many many different fields within the tourism area so from hospitality to destination management, tourism marketing of course is also very popular and some of them really um start their own business. So we just had last week guest lectures from graduates and they started their own business within the area of tourism marketing, so this is when they come back and talk about their own experiences then as practitioners. So is it possible for me to end up in a leading position? Absolutely Sibila, so we have many graduates who work for many prestigious companies around the world I can maybe mention Florian Wille, he is now the CEO of the Kaminski in Vienna.
So you're an expert in the tourism field, and I'm a tourism graduate so I would like to know how do things look for me for the future? Well, tourism in general has a bright future of course, and definitely travelling will not stop so travelling has become such an integral part of our life people appreciate it and people are longing for this so and I think there will be also more jobs available more than ever and I think if you are open-minded, if you like working with people if you like an international environment then you should sign in for the tourism program and i'm sure that you're going to have the time of your life. So thank you very much for your time, thank you for the interview, it was great, very interesting. So can we go drink that coffee now before we have to go outside? Absolutely let's go, thank you you!
2022-02-20 18:00
