Academic Program

Director of Strategic Partnerships and Innovation
Hosco

John Lohr currently serves as Hosco’s Director of Strategic Partnerships and Innovation. He is a Glion Switzerland graduate who has amassed over 12 years of hospitality, tourism and education business development work experience in +40 countries. For Hosco, John leads the partnership development with hospitality schools, departments, associations and national organizations. Earlier, John worked with IHG hotels in Thailand and India and served as the Director of Business Development for the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute (AHLEI) in Europe. He has also held various board positions for EuroCHRIE, the Council of Hospitality, Tourism and Event Educators and is a member of multiple global hospitality education and training associations. John resides in Poznan, Poland with his family and regularly visits the Hosco global headquarters in Barcelona, Spain.

MRS. Grete Arro (PhD in Psychology), works as a researcher in School of Educational Sciences in Tallinn University, where she also lectures and is related to development of teacher training. Since 2006 she has worked as a researcher in different longitudinal educational research projects in Tartu University and Tallinn University. Her research interests include learning skills, conceptual change, emotion regulation and motivation, but also environmental psychology with focus on environmental education and psychological aspects related to pro-environmental behaviour.

Abstract of the presentation:

How to support self-regulated learning in students? In order to be an effective learner, one should understand one’s own learning process – how our memory works, how to use our working memory effectively, how to learn complex topics, or how to manage one’s own attention. Students should also know, how to apply this knowledge – which learning strategies are useful and which are not; and why learners’ judgments of their own learning are often incorrect. Today, sometimes even teachers are confused what is effective and what is not in learning process; or are convinced that some learning myths are truth. We discuss some contra-intuitive findings about learning; why is it so difficult to support the self-regulated learning skills, and what are some good ideas to make progress in this.

Mark Aivo Takis is a travel industry veteran, born and raised in Estonia, but active in several countries across the globe. He started his first travel agency (Estravel AS) in 1988 and it has now grown into the largest travel agency in the Baltic countries. Estravel today is an international group, with wholly owned subsidiaries in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Australia and the USA. All of them are IATA accredited agencies who employ local staff. His longest period of living abroad was in Australia, from 2003 to 2015.

Parallel to his travel business, Takis has been active in other roles, such as the Estonian honorary consul in Australia (Sydney), Member of the Advisory Board of the American Express Travel Network (New York), Member of the Finnair Group’s heads of subsidiaries and area managers team (Helsinki), Co-Founder and Board member of Aero Airlines AS (Tallinn), Founder and president of ASTA’s Estonian Chapter, etc.

The consolidated sales turnover of Estravel Group in 2019 was 100m EUR and it employed 230 staff globally before the Covid crisis.

Abstract of the presentation

We all remember how it started. One day, the global travel industry was on a steady course to a record year. And the next, everything collapsed.

Estravel Group, a privately owned travel agency with 32 years of history and with fully owned, IATA accredited offices in six different countries (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Australia, USA) was one of the businesses who took a long time to realise what really had happened. But, against all predictions by the bankers and the media, they survived the Covid crisis.

This presentation tells you how.

Among other things, we will look at country-by-country comparison of the relative loss of revenue in each client sector, the impact of travel restrictions on the customer behaviour, the labour market flexibility and legal obstacles, different forms of government support received in different markets, etc.

And then, the most interesting question: What would this agency have done differently in hindsight?