Melbourne Business School on the hunt for tourism challenges to solve
As part of the annual Melbourne Business School-Visit Victoria Case Competition, our MBA students are looking for tourism operators with business challenges they can solve.
The students are keen to stretch their brains beyond the usual challenges set by Visit Vic to help boost local tourism, Victoria’s second-largest export earner, and want tourism businesses to also submit their problems this year.
The competition has been running at the School since 2013 and produced such winning ideas as increasing flights between Melbourne and South America – a reality since October 2017 – and attracting more Chinese tourists, including last year’s winning idea to focus on single women.
Including tour operators this year is the brainchild of the competition founder and former chairman of Tourism Victoria, John Kennedy, who wants tourism businesses to benefit from the unique opportunity to access some of the best business minds in Australia.
“We need innovative, risk-taking managers in the tourism industry,” said Mr Kennedy, whose sponsorship helps fund the competition’s prize money. “I encourage people in the industry to engage with this project and take the opportunity to get some really high-powered brains onto a problem you might have.”
Linda Li, the winner of last year’s competition, now works for a start-up that has created a travel management platform.
“They came to me on the night of the competition, and we connected. Now I’m doing some marketing work for them, so it’s pretty exciting,” Ms Li said.
Jennifer Fein, founder of the Youli travel management platform, said the competition was the perfect place to spot the talent she needed.
“When I saw Linda get up there and pitch, I thought, ‘This woman is going to win,’ and she did. I knew I had to talk to her. It made a huge difference being able to find unique talent that I need for my business.”
Contact us with your challenge
If you are, or know, a tourism business operator with a challenge our MBA students could solve, email Dianna Moodley in our School’s Engagement team at:
Submissions close 2 April 2018.