In August, GTS ALIVE celebrated its 20th anniversary and has taken further steps to reinforce its mission to ‘make student life better’. Having started as a marketing project in 2001, the operation has since grown to become an international endeavour connecting like-minded professionals, committed to, and passionate about improving the student experience. Growing from just two employees, to almost 100 across four continents, GTS ALIVE continues to expand into new territories and develop an exciting portfolio of services being delivered to the academic community.
From humble beginnings, GTS ALIVE has expanded its operations to now cover a total of sixteen markets spanning from Europe to the South Pacific. Most recently taking a shareholding stake in RDS Reisedienst Deutscher Studentenschaften GmbH, the ISIC Exclusive Representative in Germany to further support ISIC issuance and provide school access and attendance solutions in central Europe.
Other new activity includes the establishment of wholly owned operations in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, adding to the already existing presence in the United Arab Emirates and the regional office in Dubai. At the end of 2020, GTS ALIVE also entered into a local joint venture to advance the development of the ISIC in both Australia and New Zealand, and more recently has adopted a supporting role in each of Morocco and Cameroon in North and West Africa respectively. As a result, the GTS ALIVE footprint now covers exclusive development of the ISIC in 16 markets globally, including five in Europe.
“We are excited to continue to apply a proven methodology and set of processes to increase value creation for students in each territory that we establish operations in” said Matthew J. East, Group CEO.
GTS ALIVE is also proud to announce that during this 20th anniversary year, it has founded the ‘Alive Cares’ non-profit association. ‘Alive Cares’ has been established to support non-commercial projects to help improving student wellbeing especially focussing on mental health awareness. “We are seeing unprecedented amounts of students struggling with the day-to-day pressures of the current situation, especially after what has unfolded over the past 18 months. Given our close connection to the student community, we felt that we should do something to help.” said Mr East.
