New Entrepreneur (NE):
Name & surname: Katja Ilijas
Country: Slovenia
Age: 21
Sector of activity: Digitalization in Tourism
Did you already start your business? No
Host Entrepreneur (HE):
Name & surname: Urska Starc-Peceny
Country: Austria
Sector of activity: Communication
Experience in running a business (in years): 17
Name of business/website: www.peceny.net
Period of exchange: 10/05/2021 – 07/11/2021
Duration of exchange: 6 months
How did Urška support Katja in her attempt to digitalize the tourism sector?
Urška is an Austrian-based entrepreneur with Slovenian roots and international experience. Her specific field of expertise is communication and storytelling with a focus on storytelling of the digital and the new. Her professional experience spans over more than 15 years. This is one of the reasons why she welcomes exchange with young entrepreneurs from abroad as a means of widening perspective and has been the host of several successful exchanges.
Urška sees her help to young entrepreneurs while they are entering the real world of business as a way of empowerment of the young generation. For this reason, she has been active in many projects such as NASA Space Apps Challenge or Tourism 4.0, to name a few.
Her current focus is focused on development of smart tourism where interdisciplinarity in the team is a vital asset and new insights are highly welcome. Through the Erasmus exchange, Urška hopes to find potential business partners during the first stages of the project and is open to extending the cooperation beyond the scope of the exchange.
Katja Ilijaš was aiming to start her own business in her home country Slovenia. In order to gain more knowledge and gather more practical experience before founding a company, Katja decided to profit from the exchange program.
As her main area of interest lies in the intersection of tourism and digitalization of cultural heritage, a field which Urška was working with though her project of Tourism 4.0 for some years, the exchange was a great match.
Katja had the opportunity to profit from Urška’s experience, gain insights into the management of successful PR events and strategies, learn about the development of hybrid storytelling and management of digitalization projects related to cultural heritage. She succeeded in fulfilling her targets for the exchange and secured in Urška a potential business partner for the future.
Urška was able to profit from Katja’s support in administrative tasks while also using her fresh perspectives and views in relation to Urška’s smart tourism project, amongst others.