The current thesis aimed to implement a research project on a university town called Manizales in the country of Colombia. The research objective was to define how to promote the internationalization of Manizales as university town.

This study was developed as a case study in which the internationalization of the university town was the study object. To gather the data, a mix of qualitative data, in the form of interviews and focus groups was performed and analysed through data reduction methodology, while quantitative data was collected through a survey to visiting students and analysed as a sample population with basic statistics and graphs.

Key results show that participants conceive that Manizales already provides key characteristics to be called university town such as quality of life, excellence in education, research, infrastructure, while it needs to improve its foreign language skills and focus on increasing foreign visiting students, teachers and researchers as well as developing specific infrastructure for those.

The conclusions indicate that universities have worked together on common education objectives however there is an important defy to implement common research, common international cooperation actions, and ensure long term government objectives for enhancing the internationalization of Manizales as university town.

The thesis concludes with the presentation of a proposal for the internationalization of Manizales as university town, as a result of the analysed data and showcases of international university towns.