Strengthening business competence through educational travel

Abstract

This dissertation was composed to create a business plan from a business idea and to discover a successful path to a sustainable startup business. The theoretical framework consists of a review of the literature. The literature review discussed the collaboration and networking between educational and sharing tourism because these two economic platforms represent the stronghold for the development of my business idea. This dissertation aims to explore if educational business trips strengthen business competence and in what way. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews from twenty participants who took part in study tours, organized by an atypical travel agency and fifteen employees who have not participated in educational trips. The results showed what they value the most and that is strengthening business competence through educational travel. That findings support my business idea, and my business idea was to create a sharing Talent Swap platform, the service that provides companies an opportunity to improve their business by offering temporary job shadowing positions to receive external participants and offering employees to join other opening job shadowing positions in different companies/different countries. Based on information from the literature review and case study research, through the Business plan, my business idea was turned into a product – service.

Date of Award	19 Oct 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Rute Xavier (Supervisor)