Interview with Robert Kiss

Attending to ITW 2011 I had chance to speak with researchers. One of them is Robert Kiss, an Assistant Lecturer at Kodolányi János University of Applied Sciences in Székesfehérvár, Hungary who participated to ITW 2011 as a speechmaker.

How many times have you been to Turkey yet?

This is my first stay in your country and I feel very well here.

How did you find it?

It was interesting to see your mosques that all reminded me for my home town Pécs - last year’s European Culture of Capital with Istanbul and Essen (Germany) - with our old Turkish buildings. I felt a bit home.  

What were the major reasons why you visited Antalya region?

There were two things motivated me coming here when I planned my ERASMUS Mobility Program. The first point was that Antalya is the tourism capital of Turkey and Belek, with its golf courses, is an important part of it. Here I supposed that I could meet some tourist experts from tourism industry as well some colleagues from Akdeniz University and guest lecturers from other parts of the world. All these supposed to be happening in the 3^rd International Tourism Week (ITW) that was organised in the middle of April by the School of Tourism and Hotel Management Akdeniz University, Antalya. The topic of the conference was about “E-tourism: New Roles and Future Trends” that fitted into my research area as well. Here I introduced the Hungarian golf courses and their online marketing.

This led us to the second reason for visiting particularly Belek region this time. I am currently preparing my Ph.D. dissertation from golf tourism in Hungary and Belek is a world known golf destination. So I planned to do some primary researches here to make my thesis better. Therefore, I arrived 5 days earlier and visited that fantastic place on Earth.

What did you find here?

First of all I met very nice and friendly Turkish people. I knew that Turkish people are very friendly and helpful, but arriving here and getting experiences it was far beyond my expectations. Warm welcome and helpful people really attached me. Besides the people I found nice environment, gorgeous natural landscapes, and attractive coast tourists are seeking for.

What kind of researches could you make here?

As I mentioned before I had arrived to make in-depth interviews with the managers of the golf courses. There are 10 golf clubs in Belek right now and all of the managers were very helpful. As Belek is a top golf destination in Europe it was very exciting to meet those managers helping and making the “golf coast” achieving this high and elite position. Having discussions with them was very fruitful for me. They were extremely helpful and open to my questions, no matter, if I had an appointment with them or not. They explored their experiences and shared all those thoughts a researcher might need. So I could get a deep understanding of the whole state supported and planned golf coast developments by private investors and from the presently permanently increasing performance of the European golf tourism. Managers’ responses convinced me that these golf clubs are professionally working together and just strengthening all the advantages of the Belek golf coast can offer for golfers.  This is a unique place on earth and a real Paradise for golfers and a very colourful addition to the traditional summer sea-oriented tourism. They achieved that talking and writing about European golf tourism does not exist any longer without Belek. That’s a huge improvement and a great result, all the credit for those people working on it in the last decade. This is a special part of the Turkish inbound tourism as brings 120 thousand - high spending, prestigious - golfers annually into Belek.

Is there any other positive outcome of the event and your stay?

Yes, of course. Another outcome of my stay was the ITW conference. Besides meeting so many wonderful people and experts a hard copy of all the presentations will be published. This study book will be useful in our academic profession, too, as it will be a guide for students with some case studies and good sources of information. The personal outcome was that I have obviously learnt a lot from other colleagues mostly on the current trends in the hotel and hospitality environment and tourism industry, so my stay was useful from the academic side, too. I also hope that introducing my school and country can open Turkish students’ view on Central Europe a bit.

Did you have time to look around in our tourist region?

Yes, luckily I had some empty spots in my time schedule, so I could be a tourist as well. Therefore, I visited the neighbouring ancient cities such as Side, Aspendos and Perge, which were all amazing scenes and the mementos of the disappeared civilisations. It was good to see how many tourists saw opera performance in the new theatre of Aspendos. I also visited Kaleici, the historical part of Antalya, which was astonishing. I love this kind of old cities with their traditional architecture. You’re just walking in the old and narrow streets and you can feel and smell the history, the atmosphere of the city and understand a bit how people might have lived here a couple of centuries earlier. Thanks to the organizers of the conference I had chance to visit a snow covered peak in the mountains (something around 2365m over the sea level), which was gorgeous. This mountain is the reason for having this marvellous Mediterranean climate of Antalya.

There is another specialty Turkey has and I liked very much. This is your cuisine. I become a fan of your healthy meals and dishes. I ate as many specialties as I could. I think I learnt a lot from this tourist region of Turkey; although, I was working here. So definitely I have to come back as a ‘full time’ tourist and enjoy all the facilities you have here.

Do you have any message for our readers?

Definitely! You can be proud of the new developments on your sea side and also on the quality of the golf courses were established here. They are superb and were good to exam how cleverly the hotel rooms of the huge hotels in the low season were filled up by golfers and other sportsmen or sportswomen. It is a good combination of enlarging the tourist season. Finally, let me thank you for the organizers and all the participants of my stay: thanks for having such a good time in Turkey!