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The outputs of the European project on the Development of the Digital Marketing Competencies in Tourism Enterprises (DIGITOUR) were Introduced at Istanbul Medeniyet University in Tuzla Campus

The project outputs of the Erasmus+ project titled '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 by grants from the European Commission and the Turkish National Agency, were presented at Istanbul Medeniyet University Tuzla Campus.

The partners of the aforementioned project include Istanbul Medeniyet University, and Professional Hotel Managers Association (POYD) from Turkey, PhoenixKM BVBA from Belgium, IACuDIT from Greece and Inercia Digital SL from Spain.

In the opening speeches of the introductory meeting of the project outputs, the project manager Prof. Dr. Salih Kuşluvan talked about the difficulties of managing an international project and thanked Ülkay Atmaca, the head of the Professional Hotel Managers Association; Serkan Gümrükçü, the local project partner involved in the project; the international project partners and colleagues who took part in the project. In the opening speeches, representative of Professional Hotel Managers Association, Dr. Mehmet Bahar, pointed out the importance of cooperation and solidarity between universities and tourism enterprises in such projects.

Project manager Prof. Dr. Salih Kuşluvan introduced seven outputs of the project: a research report on knowledge and skills gaps in digital marketing and the need for training; learning material consisting of 12 units for digital tourism marketing training; digital tourism marketing qualifications framework; trainings on digital marketing in Greece and Spain; the e-learning platform which includes learning units and evaluation questions; e-book on digital tourism marketing and multiplier event of the project. Dr. Bahar Türkay who is a researcher in the project team of Istanbul Medeniyet University, talked about the results of the research on digital marketing related professions, training programs, lack of knowledge and skills on digital marketing and training needs in four project partner countries. As a researcher in the project, Associate Professor Özcan Erkan Akgün talked about the vocational standards related to the digital tourism marketing specialist profession and the measurement and evaluation tools developed to measure whether these standards are met. In the next sessions of the project, examples of the learning materials of the project were given. Karel Van Isacker, a researcher from PhoenixKM BVBA, drew attention to what tourism businesses should pay attention to in terms of web page design and quality. Inercia Digital 's researchers from Spain, Caridad Martinez Carrillo de Albornoz and Jesus Carlos Luna Huertas, explained what tourism businesses need to do in order to appear on the top ranks of the search results page of search engines. Vicky Alexandrou from IACuDIT gave information about various types of digital advertisements and digital channels. Tourism management undergraduate and graduate students from Istanbul University and Istanbul Medeniyet University, and managers and employees of the tourism sector attended the meeting. The 4th international meeting of the project was also held before the presentation of the project outputs.