What to Expect: The Project and the Benchmark Study
The session will open with a presentation by the PFF project manager on behalf of Pannon ETT, introducing the project’s goals, partnership structure, and main activities. A key highlight will be the project’s Benchmark Study, which maps nine thematic areas ranging from sustainable forest management and digitalisation to green business models, nature-based education, and regenerative tourism.
Students can look forward to a closer look at the themes most relevant to the seminar, including nature-based recreation and wellbeing and their service-based business models, tourism opportunities built around non-timber forest products and experience gastronomy, and regenerative tourism — an approach that goes beyond minimising tourism’s negative impacts to actively support and restore local communities and natural environments.
Six Business Concepts to Spark Discussion
Building on the benchmark findings, six tourism business concepts will be presented to kick off the conversation — among them a regenerative loyalty scheme rewarding sustainable visitor behaviour, a forest-based corporate wellbeing and team-building product, expert-led forest experience programmes, a network turning local forest and agroforestry products into bookable experiences, a gamified biodiversity and citizen-science concept, and a multi-day regenerative village tourism package. Two further concepts — on sustainable accommodation branding and a guided foraging experience — will also be introduced as additional starting points, alongside ideas contributed by Mecsekerdő Zrt., the project’s other Hungarian partner, tailored to its own forest areas and infrastructure.
Importantly, none of these ideas are meant to be fixed or final: students will be encouraged to critically challenge, adapt, and expand on them, or to bring entirely new concepts of their own.
What Happens Next — Toward the PFF Hackathon
Following the presentation, students will discuss the concepts’ target groups, value propositions, and tourism relevance, then organise themselves into working groups to develop the ideas further over the course of the seminar. Their work will cover areas such as target audience and buyer persona definition, market validation, customer journey design, pricing and revenue models, branding, partnerships, and measurable sustainability impact.
The groups are expected to deliver a short pitch and a one-page concept sheet by the end of October. These outputs are set to feed into the PFF Hackathon, to be held on 5–6 November 2026 at the University of Osijek, where the aim is to further develop pioneering business solutions — with an expected three to five initiatives per country selected for continued mentoring afterwards. Refined concepts will return in December in a full, validated business and marketing plan.
Through this collaboration with PTE KTK, the Pannon Future Forest project will combine roadshow outreach, knowledge transfer, and co-creation, giving students the chance to develop real, applicable tourism marketing solutions for an active international project.