Congress report by Najmeh Kazemi
My name is Najmeh. I am an Iranian girl who decided to educate and experience travel knowledge more professionally, out of her country’s border. Before leaving Iran, I was working as an International cultural touristic guide for 6 years with different groups of travellers from different nations. I was always interested to know and learn about different cultures. I was enjoying my job to make an opportunity for my groups, not only learn about my country and culture but also creating an atmosphere they freely share their own culture too. After some years working, I realized am so eager to travel and visit other countries. At that time, 2014, I finished my bachelor In IT field. But I found my interest mostly related to my job in Tourism sector. That’s why I moved to Milan in 2015, for studying Tourism in Bicocca University.
So, I started traveling in Europe meanwhile I was studying. Since 2015, I started my collaboration with scientific congress teams in Mashhad and universities of Iran. My responsibility was being an organizer for touristic part of these congresses. Planning different tours, applying visas, managing hotel and flight reservations…. Now after 4 years I learned a lot from all these congresses we made together in collaboration with my professional scientific team in Iran. (www.kazemi.tours).
I enjoy inviting people to come and visit my country. I enjoy changing negative image of Iran to a positive one, an image which mostly was created last 10 years due to political reasons by media and propaganda. Iranian people are so kind, warm hearted and welcoming. They are so interested to know about different cultures and that’s why they love tourists.
Educating, is the thing I really am focusing on it. I am so happy, if during last 4 years we organized many different congresses and great international speakers came to Iran and trained our students and teachers. Nowadays, because of political issues which Iran is facing, my aim is to also work and enter International tourism market. I hope better days for my country and whole world with less disease, war, economic issues and …
Regards,
Najmeh Kazemi
Dear Friends,
My name is Najmeh. I had the honor to be part of the organizing team of the First Asian Hypnosis Congress which was held in Mashhad, Iran 15-18 October 2019. I was the organizer of the touristic part of this congress.
I am so glad this experience was a big success for all. Based on my review of participants’ comments, all of them were so happy and satisfied.
The reason I decided to write to you is just to share with you the difficult moments of organizing to give you a glimpse of how this congress was born. As you know the idea of having this congress was first mentioned by dear Kris Klajs from Poland in 2015. I am so thankful to him for such a nice idea to bring this experience to all of us.
The organizing team, including Bernhard Trenkle, Mehdi Fathi, Enayat Shahidi and I, set the date for this congress, of 5th August 2017. From there we gradually started to organize things.
For instance, creating a website for the congress, advertising internationally, inviting our speakers and participants, etc… I also started to write down various travel itineraries and possibilities to update on the webpage.
Everything was going well until we realized the additional tough sanctions that President Trump made against Iran. It caused me serious problems in organizing the tourist program. For example, it became too difficult for me to define approximate cost for tours a year before and to put them on the website of the congress. I was not sure if after some months the situation would change with sanctions and if my cost approximations would remain close to what I defined or if it would change a lot. As my colleagues in the travel agency told me, hotels, flights, and transportations and … we didn’t know how to deal with low costs which resulted from currency differences after the sanctions.
Meanwhile, international banks were not allowed to work with Iran any more. So, another problem I had, was how to collect money for all payments which my agency was making such as reserving hotel rooms. In Iran you have to pay half of room’s payment as a confirmation for your reservation during the high season. I talked to many banks in Milan.
Meanwhile I asked Enayat Shahidi and Bernhard Trenkle if they also know some international bankers to help me. They also consulted with many bankers and businesses. Finally my university professor, Fabio Corno, who teaches economy, has a big office in Milan and provides economic consulting to people all around the world, agreed to give me a free consulting session with his team, only about my project. After some hours talking, we had only one solution: The travel agency in Iran.
I needed to convince them to collaborate with me for payments. We had two solutions: one was opening an account in a bank which was not under the direct effect of the sanctions. For instance, a bank in Australia or Dubai. The other, if the agency buy klonopin online legally would accept to take all the payments in cash in Iran.
The first solution while possible had some problems such as paying high commission for money exchange in Australia. Another problem was, there was no controlling who paid when, and I needed to every day control who paid by make a list from payments and giving it as a record to travel agency team in Iran. (In travel agencies, for such projects with big payment they say this is not our duty to check every day who paid from one group, while I had 7 different groups of travelers who needed to pay and to me it was a great deal of work, especially being accurate so as not to make mistakes and to be sure everybody has paid.).
The second solution, which was better, if the owner of the agency would accept all the money in cash in Iran. It was a bit far from my mind because I didn’t know how my colleague in the agency could cover all the costs. We were a huge group and I wanted to reserve high quality tours and rooms for my group and it could become too much payment for them. So to them it was high responsibility and too much work without any payment from my side.
So I consulted with Mr. Masudi and we agreed on fthe irst solution. He traveled to Australia to open an account only for this business. And I tested it by sendinbg 50 Euros from Milan to this bank account in Australia to see the commission fee. I remember it was too high and only 25 Euro came to their account. Then I consulted with my organizing team and we decided to make a video call with Mr. Masudi. Bernhard Trenkle had some worries like what if something happens and the congress won’t be done, and some other questions… At the end we talked about commissions, too, and Mr. Masudi, who is my old colleague and knows and trusts me very well, accepted to do everything without payment from our side and we do this payment in Iran in cash.
Here I have to thank two sides for this big problem solving. One side is, of course, my dear colleague and his kind and generous heart who collaborated with us in this way and made me feel so relaxed about payments. And second, all our dear international participants and their deep understanding about the problems. To me it was so nice to see how they accepted to carry high amount of money in cash and collaborate with us to handle this problem. At the end all the payments were done in Mashhad, and we invited Mr. Masudi to the stage to say thanks to him for his nice collaboration. My other special thanks is for dear Bernhard and his always kind availability for helping all international participants better understand about the situation and encouraging them to collaborate and make it easier for all to accept it.
We had some other difficulties in the issuing visas department. Some countries had complicated rules from Iran embassies. I had one visa rejection for one of our participants, but hopefully it was solved. We passed the visa challenges successfully, except some of Chinese participants who couldn’t get a visa due to their own internal political issues with their government, and a group from Finland who canceled their trip and tour completely because of Iran’s embassy in Finland and their rules which were a bit complicated to them. I hope another time they will come to Iran. These were difficulties we had with the international tasks outside of Iran. I know dear Mehdi Fathi, and his related difficulties and every day fighting to make the congress happen–from obtaining lots of permissions from different organizations to the everyday hard work of organizing a whole congress, workshops, speakers and everything.
My remaining thanks is to all my dear colleagues in Iran, to the travel agency and to the great tour guides who all are my old friends now and who made all the different trips unforgettable experiences for all the groups. Special thanks to dear Mehdi Fathi for our great, fast everyday collaboration to make everything very well organized on both sides till the last day of tours and congress. Another thanks to dear Enayat Shahidi who was always available for any consulting and always had good ideas in case of economic difficulties. At the end, a thank you to my economy professor and his availability for consulting with me on how to handle this tough situation.
I want to mention that to make a big project successful, there might be a great team behind the scenes to make it happen, but I am so thankful to have had such a wonderful collaborative team of big hearted people who made this beautiful congress that successful. The rest of the success belongs to all our great and experienced speakers from 25 countries who shared their interesting knowledge and experience with us in Iran.
Thanks to all of you who made this great event happen
My best regards and greetings,