​European TEMPUS

The Autumn 2014 consortium meeting of the TEMPUS Tourism Learning TOULL project, sponsored by the European TEMPUS programme, was held at Edinburgh Napier University's Craiglockhart Campus, hosted by Dr. Constantia Anastasiadou. The meeting was supported by the Business School and the School of Marketing, Tourism and Languages.  Delegates from three Siberian and five European universities discussed progress with implementing life-long learning programmes in tourism in four Russian regions, and debated the prospects of tourism development and public-private tourism partnerships in non-metropolitan Russia. Further inspiration came from lectures by Kenneth Wardrop on the Destination Leaders Programme, ran by the EI with funding from Scottish Enterprise and Dr Maktoba Omar discussed her experiences in working with industry on knowledge transfer partnership projects. Further inspiration of successful triple-helix initiatives was gained from a visit to Mountain Biking Centre for Scotland in Peebles and  talks at the centre from Mr. Danny Cowe and Dr. Gerraint Florida-James. This was a really productive meeting, and after three days of hard work it was only fair that delegates could join in a Ceilidh at Edinburgh's Summerhall where kilts were given a good swing. The meeting was granted a great success and discussions for further collaboration in terms of research, staff and student exchanges are currently underway.