Green Destinations / Goodplace

Placement organization

Name of organization: Green Destinations / Goodplace
Town/city: Ljubljana
Country: Slovenia
Website: http://greendestinations.info

Student

Name of student: Tom van Ebbenhorst

Specialist area: ITMC
Placement period: 2015-2016

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Social Enterprise
Organization’s activities: Currently Green Destinations exists of 32 companies, organizations and academic institutions in 23 countries and is developing in its current form since June 2014. One of these organizations is GoodPlace. This is called the Green Destinations Partnership, which has the goal of assisting destinations, regions and countries in tourism sustainability by building a network of “green” destinations – the Green Destinations Community.
Target group of the organization: Sustainable Tourism sector (B2B)
Company culture: The hierarchy in the company is existent but still quite informal. People work on a basis of trust and as long as you prove to be trustworthy, you have enough freedom in choosing your own way of working.
Number of employees: ~10
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? yes

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working? I am not working in a specific department since there is no such structure within the company. I do all-round work and have special projects assigned.
Brief description of your daily activities: Organisation Global Green Destination Day (2016) / www.greendestinationsday.com & related activities including, creating content, e-marketing, research & sourcing, customer support and promotion. Furthermore, standard tasks including preparing meetings, data collecting (data mining) and assistance in projects such as the Country Baseline Assessment (CBA) of Slovenia conform the Green Destinations Standard (GDS) and GSTC-D indicator systems
Brief description of your company assignment: Coördination/development GD webmaps/ArcGIS
Co-development Silver Tourism EU co-funded project (SILVER)

Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: Low amount of supervision from the Slovenian sidewhich could lead to chaos if unprepared for the situation. From Green Destinations, the umbrella organisation in the Netherlands, there is a high degree of superivison.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? flexible, stress-proof, independent, creative, assertive, structured, analytical, self-educating
Additional company requirements for this placement? MS Office, writing skills, ArcGIS/Maps, Photoshop (or similar), HTML
English: Intermediate
Spanish:
French:
German:
Italian:
Other languages: Slovenian or Serbo-Croatian (since collegues speak more Slovenian than English)

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: Airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? Company
How did you go to work every day? by foor or bicycle

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? no
Do you need a work permit? no, but you need a residence permit since you are staying longer than three months which costs €10 and is quite complicated to get
How did you arrange the necessary documents: Ljubljana municipality
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents? 3 weeks
Did you need certain vaccinations? No
How long in advance?

Language course

Did you take a language course before you started your placement? No
Would you recommend to have a language course prior to this placement? yes, in Slovenian, Serbian or Croatian

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 80-240
Accommodation (monthly): € 280
Local transport (monthly): € 50
General costs of living (monthly): € 400
Costs of visa: € 0
Costs of work permit: € 10
What did the company pay for/to you? No compensation

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
I travelled often through the Balkan countries so I am used to the cultures. Do prepare for a more corporate culture in comparison to the Netherlands. Even though a hierarchy is not directly visible, it is still there.
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? Yes, I struggled with the hierarchy

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: 130679@edu.nhtv.nl

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: Do:
– Join a theatre group or sports team
– Join the intern Ljubljana Facebook group (which we set up this semester S2 2016)
– Start running and hiking a lot (within 10 minutes you are in the nature)
– Visit local cinemas, theatre’s, gall or enjoy street performances
– Party in Metelkova or K4 (and visit ROG)
– Become a regular customer at Sax-, Sank- or Arena bar.
– get Studentski Boni (to eat in restaurants with 70% discount)
– rent cars with friends as often as possible and explore Slovenia and its surrounding countries: Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Italy.
– make local friends and learn the local customs (such as saying ‘aha’ (instead of oke) in every sentence)
– go for outdoor sports (rafting, hiking, zipling in Soca valley)

Don’t
– Do not party in PR’Skeleton bar, Cutty Sark or Cirkus
– Don’t drink Union, you should be on team Lasko
– Don’t visit Maribor (it’s an ugly and boring city)
– Don’t pay more than 1.50 for a glass of wine

More Do’s or Don’t? Contact me.

Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: Ljubljana, even though a small capital, is a sprawling city, heavily focused on culture and nature. If you decide to live here, Do any of the things named above. Since Slovenia is so small, the whole country can be viewed as its surroundings

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link