Place Management Training in Pula

Tuesday this week, a Bearing team had the opportunity to give a  Place Management training session in the city of Pula in Istria, Croatia. We work with projects in Pula and we have already written several articles how the city´s unique cultural offer which should be presented in the best way for the target markets.

In the training session it was clear that the participants know the opportunities of their city well, and the training focused on how to think about Pula´s competitive offerings for visitors and investors and to give guidance on how to develop the city and the place brand. The participants in the training were the right group to attend, coming from public sector, directors of institutions, university people, tourist board, etc. It was important for us to take this opportunity to offer them the know-how that they will use to manage opportunities and both Bearings Founding Partner and Research Manager had travelled to participate in giving the training. Improvement of the skills is part of the learning process that we in Bearing see one of most important steps for successful place managers.

The scope of the training was in highlighting the assets of Pula and by using the examples from benchmarking that we also prepared for the City, to show what would be the most appropriate business model for further development. As we know, cities are competing for the position on the market and for the proper competitive positioning, every place should know its strong points.

The interactive approach of the session showed us that not only we are bringing new knowledge, but also feedback was we should have more interactive sessions like this, and training should take place earlier in the project preparation process.

Pula is now in a position where it can develop a high level cultural offer that can be communicated through the place brand in a collaboration between all sectors.

By presenting the importance of collaboration that should be in between stakeholders, we helped to set up the basic understanding that in the end, they all depend on each other but for the same goals.