Fashion Business and Promotion

Developing a Fashion Degree into a career in the Travel Industry

A Fashion Business and Promotion degree enabled development of skills in a vast amount of areas, adaptable to a wide variety of business opportunities: Marketing, PR, Events Management, International Retailing, Buying, Trends Forecasting and Visual Merchandising.

Undertaking the role of Venue Manager in Events Management, saw "Blind Folded Dining" raising £1500 for charity. Creating a company “Evolve Events,” taught: advertising, marketing, sales and fundraising.

International Retailing presented ‘Wilko’ in Germany. Primary research, interviewing an owner and developing the concept, gave an insight into international research. Completing work placements in the fashion industry, brought about realisation of how transferable skills are to tourism.

Dissertation

“Millennials and the Experience Economy” explored how Millennials prefer experiences over materialistic goods and the impact of social media’s damage on the environment through tourism. Geotagging imagery can eg: Endanger animals by informing poachers of locations. Erosion, causing beaches such as Maya Bay, to be closed. Social bragging has overtaken appreciating the scenic image or cultural experience.

A placement at TUI head office, gave further inspiration, creating ‘TUI and preservation tourism’ in an individual final project. This included an experience, created to reduce high tourism and erosion by creating holidays where people help the environment through: building, sanctuaries, rainforest planting, collecting beach and river rubbish, cycle / walking routes all aiming to prevent further pollution in activities in bespoke long haul holiday destination packages. It created routes for tourists to explore their surroundings giving a personalised experience instead of the classic package holiday or bus tour.

Having a year exploring and adapting from fashion to the tourism industry helped realisation that tourism was the career path to pursue. Due to COVID-19 this will begin with further consultancy, gathering background knowledge of the industry and investigating which areas of the world to focus on. Alternative work will be applied for in this period whilst the economy recovers.

A travel blog has also been created, with insight into ‘how to holiday luxury, on a budget’. Adapting how previous luxury travel, can be easily adjusted to similar trips on a budget. The posts will also explore the Covid 19 impact.