Some final thoughts

Summer vacation has practically started for those lucky ones who have already managed to hand in all their assignments, but the rest of us should also be able to forget all about school by the end of next week, as the last deadline of the semester is on Friday 10th. Naturally this also means that Lapland Meeting Guide is pretty much complete, and as Sophie said in the previous post, we are very proud and happy with the end result! The website is now open for all world to see, and all there's left to do is to wait and find out if the people checking the contents of our guide spot some mistakes that need to be fixed. However, as we have done our research very carefully, I feel quite optimistic that there won't be any major flaws. Fingers crossed, everybody!

Even though our guide looks great now, working on its appearance turned out to be a little less joyful than we had originally thought it would be. First of all, time was running out a lot faster than we would have liked it to (Weird how that always happens, isn't it?) and secondly WordPress didn't exactly make our lives easier. In fact, I think the most commonly heard sentence when we were refining the site was 'What just happened?!'. Furthermore, it was a bit frustrating that in the end we weren't able to play with different font alternatives and the placement of the pictures, which was the part that some of us had been really looking forward to. You see, WordPress is sneaky enough to charge its users for such luxuries. Anyhow, all's well that ends well, and I feel that we managed to create an inviting site even without paying for an upgrade. Much of our success is owed to the wonderful pictures in the guide, so a big hug and thank you for everyone who allowed us to use their awesome photos!

In addition to the guide, or research assignment of the semester is also now finished, as the final version was handed in earlier today. Analyzing the results could have actually been over last week, but then we were asked if we would be willing to go for the highest grade by creating and analyzing a few more tables where the results would be divided by different countries and hotel types. All of us who had the time agreed. It wouldn't make much sense to start a marathon and give up if you were told that the run was a couple of hundred meters longer than you had imagined, right? What is more, these tables were what we had originally thought the research was all about - comparing different hotels and countries - and they were actually quite interesting to examine. We found out e.g. that Swedish hotels had received the highest number of lower grades on both Tripadvisor and Booking.com, and in general the hotels in Central Europe were more highly rated than their Nordic competitors. It also appears that a bar is a must in a hotel where ever you go, Italians are into spas, Germans like to have their lounges, and people in Central Europe are more concerned with their fitness than us here up North. Or at least they have more gyms there.

The end of our timetable for the semester (with a couple of deadlines

that have already been taken care of) , yay!

So all in all, this spring has taught us a lot, and I have really liked working on our project. As Sophie said, it is kind of bittersweet that the semester is coming to an end, as our group is going to scatter all across Europe when fall comes. I must say, these girls have set the bar very high for any future groups I'm going to be a part of! Thank you for everything and have an amazing summer!
Reetta

Hello everybody!

With this semester coming to an end we have been very busy finishing all of our school work and working on Lapland Meeting Guide. Here's a few things that have been going on..

Last weekend was a busy one. On Friday we sent off a draft of our research report into hotels in Switzerland, Northern Italy, Austria, Germany and in Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian Lapland. Over the weekend we were studying vigorously for a mathematics test we had on Monday, but at the same time we were perfecting our website and adding pictures to make it come alive. We still had some perfecting to do with our destination descriptions as well as practicing for our final presentation of Lapland Meeting Guide on Tuesday. 

 

Our final presentation couldn’t have gone better and the feedback we got was very positive and encouraging! It made us feel that all our hard work has been noticed. The end result is something to be proud of and we are all so pleased with the way it has turned out. Visually I believe our Guide with all its beautiful pictures really invites its readers to travel to Lapland and hold meetings in Lapland’s inspiring surroundings!

As many before me have said, this spring semester has gone by so fast, I can’t even believe it! We still have some fine tuning with our research report and some other school work to finish, but either than that school is almost over! I have enjoyed working with our group so much it’s kind of sad to realize I will not be seeing most of them for a long time..

Wishing everyone a lovely summer,

Sophie

Terve Hi Moro! Loppukiri käynnissä:)

No niin blogin pitkä hiljaiselo päättyköön, finally! Meidän ryhmä on ollut aina vaan kiireisempi kun tehtävien deadlinet ja kesä lähestyy. Niin sanotusti siis monta rautaa tulessa. Ollaan tässä pidetty tapaamista jos toistakin ahkeraan tahtiin ja väsäilty esityksiä, raporttia ja produktia ja mitä nyt milloinkin. Kohtahan kaikki onkin kasaamista vailla valmista:) Oikeestaan nyt on enää sellasta hienosäätöä oppaan sisällön ja  ulkoasun kanssa, joka on onneksi hauskaa ja tärkeetä hommaa, koska visuaalinen puoli puhuu kuitenkin aina puolestaan:) Sitten kun kaikki on valmista, ni voin kyllä sanoo että sitten se fiilis vasta hieno onkin! Täytyy kyllä tässä samassa nyt myös todeta, että tää kevät on mennyt toooooosi nopeesti! Muut onkin siitä jo täällä maininneet, mutta täytyy itekkin vielä liittyä kerhoon.

Ollaan jo niin pitkällä meidän opiskeluissa, että tän kevään jälkeen tuulet on ihan erilaiset itse kullekin, riippuen vähän siitä lähteekö vaihtoon, meneekö työharjotteluun vaiko jatkaako opiskeluita Suomen maaperällä, meidän Campuksella. Ollaan tänä keväänä kunnostauduttu monikielisen opiskelun parissa (tai oikeastaan koko opiskeluiden ajan), joten seuraavassa samoja ajatuksia in English:

Hello to all of our readers out there! It´s been quiet for a while, but in our defense we have been super busy!
It is almost summer already and that means we have all sorts of deadlines regarding our project work and all other assignment waiting behind the corner;) We have been getting together on a regular basis with our group and getting all of our material together. It is looking good and in a few days everything should be ready:) We still have to think about the visual side of things and that´s fun.

So then shortly about our next semesters..they are going to be a bit different for everyone because we are so far along with our studies, some of us are going to spend their fall as exchange students, some of us might do their work placement soon and a few are going to continue their studies at our Campus here in Finland.
But nevertheless stay tuned, we still have some thoughts we want to share with you! Oh and by the way about two weeks ago it was still snowing out here, but despite of that I have seen my first flowers already, quite nice right? And now it´s raining (water not snow), what´s happening out here??

Hoping for more sunny days,

Riikka

some thoughts by Emilia

Time goes fast and the project moves on! Tomorrow we have a meeting with our LMG group and we should have most of the material related to the Lapland meeting guide ready. Not all, but luckily we have still some time left before the final deadline! (Which happen to be within 20 days..!!!) It´s amazing to realize how fast the time has gone. Last January feels like yesterday and it´s April already. I´m not saying it´s a bad thing :D Maybe we have just done so much work at school that time just flies unremarked. But it feels so good that summer is finally coming..

 I can say that I´ve learned a lot about business travelling this spring semester. Anyone who needs a helping hand related to business travelling in Lapland, here I am! (and soon our guide.) I´m getting pretty exciting about our project in these last days, because I think the final refinement is the best part of the whole process. Finally we can start to think about those colors and pictures we´re going to use in our website! :)
 
Laters!

-Emilia

The latest weeks our lives

Here we are again writing to the blog and commenting our project. This time of the year should be very enjoyable time to go outside and see all the snow melting and sun is shining. The summer is coming, but not yet... We still have lot of school work to complete before we can tune ourselves into the summer mood.

Spring is coming

As in last posting it was said that we were tired and too much work to do, surprise surprise it's not over yet. Last week we were playing with Amadeus distribution system and we found ourselves sitting in the class every day from 9 am to 7 pm. At least when I got home from school the only thing I did was to eat and sleep. So no progress in creating material to Lapland Meeting Guide. I have started to feel little panic if I can finish my part of the guide since Easter is just few days away. (I guess my project mates are feeling it too!)

In our research (comparing hotels in Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish Lapland) there were some times we didn't know what to do, do we have to write many reports or what? Now we know how to do it but the only worry we have is if we have enough time to complete it. All the tables that we have to modify, theory to write and of course the most important, our interpretation of results. Actually I feel little guilty because I found out I had done some mistakes in gathering information and now we have to change some of the results which means more work. But if we want to accomplish our mission the only thing is to work hard and not to pay attention to other things that are waste of time like playing games in internet. Unfortunately it is addictive.

Anyway, I can't even count how many programs we have learned to use in our school during the last 2 years. The newest one is SPSS statistics program in which we have entered the information we found about the hotels in different areas. Now we have 98 hotels around Europe and the data is ready to be turned into tables. Actually thats what we did in todays lecture. Now the next step is to share the parts ready to be interpreted and added to the raport. Deadline is in the halfway of next month so we can have some time to relax as well.

 

SPSS program logo

We all feel like time is going too fast and 3 months have gone just like that. Ahead we have these big projects and in addition few exams, presentations, distance work etc. I still believe in our team, we can make it happen despite little difficulties :)


Greetings,
Salla