GCU Events students create luxury tourism package for Celtic Connections as part of university project

GCU students had the opportunity to test their organisational skills by creating a tourist travelling experience to the Celtic Connections Festival – a traditional music festival which takes place each year.

Fourth year International Events Management students were tasked with the challenge of developing a week-long travelling experience to the annual Celtic Connections Festival – with the aim to attract tourists to visit Glasgow during the festival.

Celtic Connections is a global celebration of Celtic and folk music alike, attracting tourists and music fans to Glasgow each year.

As part of the Celtic Connections Consultancy Project, students had to work in teams to develop a week-long luxury experience which would help showcase Glasgow to Celtic music fans. The idea of the project is to allow the Celtic Connections group to use this experience as a package for customers.

4th year International Events Management student Donna Venman enjoyed working on the project. She said: “The project was great to be involved with, it really brought back the practical side of the events industry.

I really enjoyed working with team members from the marketing department as well as working for an external client.”

She added: “This was the first time I have worked with an external client other than working with charities as a beneficiary of events I have coordinated in my course at the City of Glasgow College.”

Working remotely was a challenge for the team, however the students understood the need to adapt due to the limits that COVID-19 pandemic has created for the events industry. She said: “Being completely online for this project brought challenges. We had one team member that had an unpredictable internet connection so we had to work around that as well as make contingency plans for any technical issues that may have occurred during the actual presentation.

Working remotely was fine as we have already performed two terms remotely by this point. It gave us to experience that we can take to the workplace, as remote working will remain for the foreseeable future due to the continued apprehension with the current Covid situation.”

She added: “I have always had an interest in incentive/experience tourism events and this has increased its appeal to me. Hopefully, the industry opens soon within Scotland so that I can pursue this avenue soon.”

Find out more about the Celtic Connections festival on their website

By Rachael McAlonan

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