SurfScholar an advising service to attract international students to get entire academic degrees in Portugal’s most dynamic Surf-City: Lisbon.

Abstract

The following text is a business plan for SurfScholar - an advising service to attract international students to get entire academic degrees in Portugal’s most dynamic Surf-City: Lisbon. SurfScholar is presented as a viable business concept with environmental, economic and socio-cultural sustainability as guiding principles. For a variety of reasons, Lisbon is becoming an increasingly popular destination for international student mobility. Additionally, Lisbon and its surrounding coastal areas have been experiencing a recent boom in surf related tourism. The text goes into detail about how SurfScholar combines educational tourism and surf tourism by promoting Lisbon as the perfect destination to be both an international student and a surf tourist. To test the market interest in this concept, a simple website was created with a call-toaction. With minimal marketing, SurfScholar received a robust amount of interest from people around the world. SurfScholar’s mission to is to be at the forefront of linking educational tourism and surf tourism and to explore Portugal’s potential as the premier global destination for this new niche segment of tourism. SurfScholar’s business plan is formatted in accordance with the United States Agency for International Development’s, Sustainable Tourism Enterprise Development: A Business Planning Approach, (Humke & Hilbrunner, n.d).