Turistica

Študenta Turistice Marcel Bešter in Aleksandra Eraković sta ob pomoči slovenskega veleposlaništva v Washingtonu (ga. Nuška Zakrajšek) na Sejmu izobraževanja na San Diego State University v San Diegu, Kalifornija predstavila izobraževalno ponudbo v Sloveniji in promovirala delovanje Univerze na Primorskem ter UP Fakultete za turistične študije Turistica v Portorožu.

On March 14th 2012, the international student center of San Diego State University hosted an Education Abroad fair. There are around 2000 international students from around 100 different countries at SDSU every year. Only 7 were given their own stand and a chance to invite American students to consider studying abroad. Slovenia was represented by Alexandra Erakovic and Marcel Bester, senior international exchange students from the Faculty of Tourism Studies Portoroz – Turistica. With the help of our embassy in Washington, we were able to promote our very small country to the people that very rarely now what Slovenia is, let alone where it is. There were quite a few people interested in our country, especially in the city of Bled. Most of them found the idea of a church on an island in the middle of the lake just fascinating. Unfortunately, there were not a lot of people interested in coming to study to our country, but the truth is that only around 1 % of all SDSU students actually go to other countries seeking a degree or an exchange experience. And out of that 1 % people mostly go to places they now or have at least heard about. But since this is the first year that Turistica has students at SDSU, we really hope that will change. We showed a lot of pictures, handed out a lot of material and mostly got people’s contact information so we can be in contact with them and promote our country and Faculty even when we are no longer in the USA.

There is one more thing to be said. Although we are a very small country and people sometimes think of us as immature, we were actually the only representatives that were well dressed, which we believe gives an important message to other people, how mature and touristic orientated we actually are.