Fairs, new trends and student preferences: interview to Debora Piva, FulviaTour

ETN Focus’s sixth appointment with the world of education. This time we spoke to Debora Piva, Head of Group Travel of FulviaTour, agency of Adria (Ro).
Fairs, new trends and student preferences are some of the topics covered during the interview.

Enjoy the reading!

Hi Debora, first of all thank you for your kindness for giving us this interview.

Let’s start with your FulviaTour agency: how long have you been working in this sector?

FulviaTour has been working in the tourism sector for more than 20 years: we take care of holidays, group travels, study trips. We work really well with foreign schools: they are punctual, trusty and efficient and it’s really nice to work with them.

What are the main requests of Italian students? What is the growing trend?

As for us, the growing trend is the Alternanza Scuola Lavoro abroad that combines the language course with the internship; we work a lot with this. And then certainly language courses abroad and study holidays are very popular. Boarding school, on the other hand, is still an area that hasn’t been explored a lot yet.

People and kids increasingly prefer the language schools with family accommodation over college accommodation.

Which educators would you like to meet at an agents’ fair? What are you interested in?

We would like to expand our portfolio with French, German, Irish and Scottish schools.

Obviously, schools in the UK are always the most popular so for me it is always good to meet them too.

I would also like to meet schools that offer language courses together with other opportunities for Alternanza Scuola Lavoro, so schools that have different proposals in addition to the language course such as language course plus something on IT or cooking and things like that.

Do you generally attend large or small fairs?

In the past we attended large fairs in London, Brasil etc but lately try to focus on smaller fairs because then we can really work with the schools and are really useful.

I take the opportunity to ask you if you have a mind to return to an ETN Focus

Oh, absolutely. You know, we kept many of the contacts from the schools we met last year during your ETN Focus in Milan. For example, there was a high-level Swiss school which we started a collaboration with and it was very positive because it allowed us to expand our offer. I really hope to be able to return to your fair because for us it’s a wonderful opportunity to expand our contacts and expand our market.

Well Debora, thanks a lot and I will surely send you the invitation for the next event to be held in Milan on 6 and 7 September.

Great! I’ll wait to start organizing myself and getting ready for the event. See you soon, Alessandra.