In Slovenia tourism is a very fast growing industry, while the wood processing industry is declining. After the economic crisis in the period from 2007 and 2014, many wood processing companies went out of business, leading to an almost 50% decrease in the number of people working in the industry between 2007 and 2017. This prompted the Slovenian government to produce a plan in 2012 to increase the industry’s competitiveness with the slogan “wood is beautiful”, which promotes wood services and wooden products by organizing events, as well as raising awareness of the wood industry among younger people. The goal of this graduate work was to organize a student event that would look for new ideas in order to connect tourism and the wood industry in order to raise its economic importance. I organized this event by looking at an example of Hekaton, which focuses on looking for new ideas and solving problems. Those who attended were students from various different faculties who developed new ideas and approaches to connect tourism and the wood industry by brainstorming. The event, called Lesaton (with les being the Slovenian word for wood), took place on the last two days of May in 2017 at the University of Ljubljana's Biotechnology Faculty. Eight ideas were presented during the course of this event, and the jury chosen three to promote. The winning idea was called “Learn about wood by traveling abroad”, and connected tourism and the wood industry by establishing an interactive centre that focuses on different activities that promote the Slovenian wood industry and learning about wood.
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