Category Archives: Uncategorized

Partnership with the Digital Tourism Think Tank

by marie

The eTourism Lab at Bournemouth University is happy to announce a partnership with the Digital Tourism Think Tank (http://thinkdigital.travel/)!

The partnership generates mutual advantages for both parties. Whereas the eTourism Lab will be provided with a new platform for its members to publish their cutting-edge research, the Digital Tourism Think Tank will benefit from useful insights into the latest innovations in information and communication technology for travel and tourism.

Moreover, the partnership will generate a valuable source for marketers and tourism professionals who can access both platforms and stay updated about the emerging trends from the eTourism industry, which becomes increasingly important in today’s dynamic market conditions.

What is the Digital Tourism Think Tank? 

 The Digital Tourism Think Tank is an initiative that provides thought leadership to the tourism industry in digital marketing best practice. The project, which was created by Managing Director at SE1 Media with 10 years experience working in digital tourism marketing Nicholas Hall, puts together a team of experts in diverse and varied fields of the tourism industry. The Digital Tourism Think Tank comprises special features including interviews with industry experts and DMOs, best practice guides and reports, a programme of events and workshops and the Digital Tourism Brand Index.

Partners of Digital Tourism Think Tank 

  • Yahoo (lead partner)
  • IFITT
  • European Travel Commission
  • Last Exit
  • Travel Bloggers Unite
  • CATALUNYA Tourism
  • European Cities Marketing

 

 

 

 

 

ENTER2013 Awards for the BU eTourismLab

by Barbara Neuhofer

Last week, after the success of ENTER2013 @ Innsbruck, Austria Professor Dimitrios Buhalis and PhD student Soultana Symeonidou were both awarded separate awards from the conference committee.

Dimitrios was awarded the “20 Years ENTER Paper Contribution” 1st Place and Soultana won the “Best PhD Proposal Award” 3rd Place.

Enter 2013 ran from Tuesday 22nd – Friday 25th and celebrated 20 years of continuing contribution and ground breaking interactions within the IFITT community.

The ENTER conference, organised by IFITT, offers a worldwide and unique forum for attendees from academia, industry, government, and other organizations to actively exchange, share, and challenge state-of-the-art research and industrial case studies on the application of information and communication technologies to travel and tourism.

Congratulations to both Dimitrios and Soultana! For more information on Enter please see here

Research project on social media for conferences

by Barbara Neuhofer

In January 2013 I started a research project called: ‘The Relevance of Social Media when Generating International Engagement for Conferences’. The core aim of this research is to determine the influence that social media engagement by conference convenors might have on a total conference experience of delegates. Additionally how social media can add value to the different needs and wants of conference delegates and this way increase all delegates’ conference value. This research project will be conducted for the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT); hence Prof. Dimitrios Buhalis and Dr. Alessandro Inversini will supervise this research project.

Up until now, great research has been conducted on social media, as well as on its effects towards users. However little academic research on social media can be found related to conferences in specific. Therefore this research project, focused on conferences, will be a valuable contribution to the research industry. In order to establish grounded results for the research, the main focus will be on conferences in general. Consequently qualitative and quantitative research will be conducted in different environments in order to generate knowledge from diverse perspectives. Nonetheless the research project will include a case study on the social media engagement of IFITT and the possible influence this has on the conference value of ENTER 2013 Conference delegates.

It is of great importance to the research to generate an overall understanding of the relevance of social media for conferences. Hence a survey on social media and conference value has been constructed. We would be grateful if you could complete the survey according to your experience. Please click here to open the online survey.

This project is aimed to be finished by the end of May. Would you be interested in a copy of the results, please send a request to press@ifitt.org.

Author: Liz Bouten

LinkedIn

 

 

 

ENTER2013 Conference: eTourism Opportunities and Challenges for the next 20 years

by Barbara Neuhofer

 

Innovation and latest trends at the ENTER 2013 conference in Innsbruck

Innovation and latest trends at ENTER 2013 www.enter-2013.org
Innovation and latest trends in information and communication technology will form one of the main themes at ENTER 2013 providing conference delegates with an useful insight into a number of focussed issues such as social commerce, augmented reality and best practice in tablet and devise usage.
Finding out about innovation and latest trends might be one of the key reasons why ENTER 2013 attracts so many people to join the great conference where academics and the industry come together and share their knowledge with the conference delegates. ENTER 2013 will be full of presentations that introduce new innovations and the latest trends in information and communication technology in travel and tourism illustrated with outstanding examples of best practise.

The 23rd January 2013 will start with an interesting session that explicitly focuses on ‘Innovation in Social Commerce – latest trends in Travel Booking’. This session will be moderated by Nicholas Hall and consists of a number of presentations about topics like ‘Dynamic social media usage for results’ presented by Julianne Sass from the FTI Touristic Group.

The second conference day will be opened with a keynote speech about ‘Cutting edge IT innovations in tourism’ outlined by Oliviero Stock from the Center for Information Technology. More presentations in the afternoon will focus on the issue of ‘Augmented reality in tourism’, which will be moderated by Zornitza Yovcheva and Dimitrios Buhalis from Bournemouth University.
The theme around ‘Innovation and latest trends’ will probably reach its height on Friday, the 25thJanuary 2013. At this day the innovation and industry focus will start in the morning with a session about ‘The image and video revolution of the Web’, that will be moderated by Alessandro Inversini. This session will consist of presentations that will cover the topics ‘Viral videos for hotel business and destination promotion’ introduced by Janez Jager, who works at Life Class Hotels & Resorts and  ‘The power of image and Video and story telling’ presented by Damian Cook from E-Tourism Frontiers. A second session focussing on ‘Tablet and device innovation clinic –best practice’ will include presentations about more innovative topics and trends like  ‘Cultural Tourism Ways through mobile Applications and Services’ and ‘Web based platform for DMOs – Managing Multi-platform Mobile Guides’.
Finally the theme on innovation and latest trends will be rounded off with a 20th anniversary panel and final conclusions of the ENTER 2013 Conference, where the main findings of the conference will be summarized under the topic ‘Back to and from the future: 20 years of innovation in in tourism’.
The examples stated above provide only a small insight into the great variety of those presentations at ENTER 2013 Conference that are focussed on innovation and latest trends of information and communication technology in travel and tourism. An overview about all the presentations can be obtained from the draft program, which is available on the website of ENTER 2013 (http://www.enter-2013.org/).
By using the theme of innovation and latest trends ENTER 2013 follows its aim to actively exchange, share, and challenge state-of-the-art research and industrial case studies on the application of information and communication technologies to travel and tourism. It will provide a great opportunity to people from the industry to react upon these trends at early stages and benefit from positive results.
The ENTER 2013 Conference will take place between the 22nd and 25th of January, 2013 in the Congress Convention Centre in Innsbruck, Austria.  People intending to attend the conference may register on the website (http://www.enter-2013.org/Registration-64.htm)
See the visualised programme here:  ENTER 2013 PROGRAMME

VS-Games 2013 – 5th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications hosted at Bournemouth University

by Barbara Neuhofer

VS-Games 2013, the fifth outing of the International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications will be hosted at Bournemouth University, UK between the 11th and the 13th of September 2013.

With the conference organized in previous years at locations such as Coventry (UK), Braga (Portugal), Athens (Greece) and Genoa (Italy), it will take place, for 2013, at the state of the art Kimmeridge House building of Bournemouth University, situated at the main Talbot campus of the institution.

The development and deployment of games with a purpose beyond entertainment and with considerable connotations with more serious aims is an exciting area with immense academic but also commercial potential. This potential presents both immediate opportunities but also numerous significant challenges to the interested parties involved, as a result of the relatively recent emergence and popularity of the medium. The VS Games 2013 conference aims to address this variety of relevant contemporary challenges that the increasingly cross-disciplinary communities involved in serious games are currently facing. This will be achieved by, amongst other ways, the comprehensive dissemination of successful case studies and development practices, the sharing of theories, conceptual frameworks and methodologies and, finally, the discussion of evaluation approaches and their resulting studies.

Call for Papers:

For VS Games 2013 we are therefore seeking contributions from researchers, developers from the industry, practitioners and decision-makers which aim to advance the state of the art in all of the technologies related to serious games. The following listed topics are particularly encouraged, though it should be mentioned that they are not the only ones of interest to VS Games 2013 and that the list below is not exhaustive by any means:
• Game design
• Virtual environments
• Game-based learning methodologies
• Mixed and augmented reality
• Computer graphics
• Gamification
• Case studies/user studies for serious games and virtual worlds
• Mobile gaming
• Interactive storytelling
• Application areas
• AI for serious games
• Educational/learning theories and their application
• Visualization
• Pervasive gaming
• Human-computer interaction
• User modeling
• Alternate reality
• Simulation
• Platforms and tools

 

The following are the dates of submission for the different tracks of the VS Games 2013 conference:

• Full Papers (8 pages): 25th March 2013
• Short Papers (4 pages): 25th March 2013
• Poster Papers (2 pages): 25th March 2013
• Call for Workshops: 25th March 2013

The best authors will be invited to write an extended version of their paper for inclusion in the IGI Global’s International Journal of Game-Based Learning. Further proceedings and other journal special issue details for the VS Games 2013 publications are being finalised and will be announced as soon as possible.

For further information please visit the conference website: http://www.vsgames2013.org/

Prof. Dimitrios Buhalis and Barbara Neuhofer of the eTourismLab at the IFITT@WTM Technology enabling Travel

by Barbara Neuhofer

WTM TECHNOLOGY ENABLING TRAVEL ORGANISED BY IFITT

5th NOVEMBER 2012

Technology Enabled Tourism Experience Economy
The International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT) is hosting a workshop entitled “WTM Technology enabling travel organised by IFITT” at the London World Travel Market (WTM) 2012. The event will take place on Monday, 5th November 2012 from 10:00 am to 12:30 pm in the South Gallery Room of the WTM exhibition grounds, ExCel, London.
In this workshop representatives from leading travel and tourism businesses will discuss current issues relating to tourism and technology, exploring specifically how recent technological developments can enhance travel and tourism experiences. The experience economy has become an increasingly important concept in modern society as well as in business. Tourism as a traditionally service-dominated industry has always been on the forefront of the experience economy. Therefore, for tourism businesses, designing and delivering meaningful, unique and memorable consumer experiences has become an imperative. At the same time, recent dynamic technological advancements have provided opportunities for adding value to already high-level quality tourism products and services.
IFITT President Professor Dimitrios Buhalis said “as tourism and leisure are increasingly recognised as experience industries we need to explore how technologies and technology enabled services will be critical in developing and delivering dynamic tourism experiences. Social media, mobile technologies, augmented reality and eventually gaming will give us technological tools for developing such experiences.” The event will explore this fantastically exciting area and discuss how businesses in the tourism, travel, cruise, aviation, or hospitality sectors, as well as a number of destination management organisations, have successfully implemented recent technologies in order to enhance the experiences for their customers.
The workshop will be moderated by Professor Dimitrios Buhalis (IFITT President and Director eTourismLab, Bournemouth University). Speakers from the travel and tourism industry and academia will include

 

The admission to the IFITT workshop is free to all visitors BUT registration to access the WTM is required. To register for the workshop and access, visit http://ifitt.eventbrite.co.uk/ to register for the WTM please visit http://www.wtmlondon.com/
For more information contact: Professor Dimitrios Buhalis (IFITT President) at ifitt@ifitt.org or dbuhalis@bournemouth.ac.uk

John Fotis of the eTourism Lab Bournemouth University presenting in Greece’s leading tourism conference

by Barbara Neuhofer

John Fotis of the eTourism Lab Bournemouth University addressing the SETE conference in Athens. New forms of tourism marketing, social media and strategic responses www.seteconferences.gr

 
Very honored to deliver a keynote presentation in Athens, and be among a number of distinguished speakers, during the 11th annual “Tourism & Development” conference organized by the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE) after an invitation by its Director General Mr George Drakopoulos.
My keynote is entitled “Communication and promotional strategies for tourism enterprises and destinations: A low cost approach and ways of influencing travel related consumer behaviour”. The presentation will describe the role of social media in tourists’ “expanded trip”, their impacts on consumer behavior, and will suggest tactics and actions that destinations and tourism companies can incorporate into their marketing and communication strategies.
This year conference is entitled: “Marketing Greece – promoting the quality side of modern Greece”. It will take place on 29-30 October at Athenaeum Intercontinental, and among the other keynote speakers are: Mr Antonio Tajani, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship; Mrs Maria Damanaki, European Commissioner of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries; Mrs Olga Kefalogianni, Minister of Tourism; Dr Andreas Andreadis, SETE President; and Mr George Drakopoulos, SETE Director General and President of the Affiliate Members Board of UNWTO.
Before my keynote, there will be a round table discussion session on “Marketing Greece: Cooperation between public and private sector in promoting Greek tourism”. The discussion panel will consist of Mr K. Karahalios, Secretary General of the Greek National Tourism Organization; Mr K. Lambrinopoulos, President of the Hellenic Management Association; Mr D. Mavros, President of the Association of Greek Advertising & Communication Companies; Mr G. Tsakiris, President of the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels; Mr G. Tsopelas, Managing Director of McKinsey & Company (Greece); and Mr A. Andreadis, President of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises.
The Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (www.sete.gr) represents 14 Panhellenic Unions of Tourism Enterprises & 485 Tourism Business Units. SETE aims at constantly boosting competitiveness and demonstrating the key role of tourism in the Greek economy. Their annual conference is considered to be the prime tourism forum in Greece.
For more information you may visit SETE’s conference page (in Greek).

 

New publication: Dr Christos Gatzidis co-authors book on Epic Games’ Unreal Development Kit (UDK)

by Barbara Neuhofer

 

 

Dr Christos Gatzidis has co-authored an instructional text book on Epic Games’ Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free game engine. UDK is one of the most popular third-party developer licensed game engines around (the commercial version of the Unreal engine is used in games such as Batman Arkham City, the Mass Effect series and many others). The Unreal engine can also be used for 3D virtual world/environment creation, including of course interactive touristic experiences.

The book, titled UDK iOS Game Development Beginner’s Guide was published by Packt Publishing on the 24th of August. It covers the fundamentals of the Unreal engine via the creation a third-person shooter game in UDK, with a specific focus on Apple mobile device deployment such as the iPad, the iPhone and the iPod Touch. After the game is created, the reader will learn what can be done with any project in order to optimize a UDK game for the iOS platform and discover special considerations that need to be made. Finally, the user will be shown how to publish his/her game on the App Store for the world to see and play along, with details on different costs associated with publishing.

More information on the book can be found here http://link.packtpub.com/bbexNT

BU eTourismLab’s Professor Dimitrios Buhalis in a high level panel discussion on emerging markets with a special focus on Asia

by Barbara Neuhofer

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis, Director of eTourism Lab at Bournemouth University and President of IFITT will be participating in a high level panel discussion on emerging markets’ (with a special focus on Asia) on the 17th July 2012 at The National Tourism and Events Excellence (TEE) Conference  in Melbourne at the Melbourne Cricket Ground

 

 Panel members will also include:

  • The Hon Martin Ferguson AM MP, Minister for Resources and Energy, Minister for Tourism,
  • Tourism Australia Managing Director Andrew McEvoy,  and
  • Dr Taleb Rifai Secretary General of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.

This will be on top of his presentation on eTourism innovations at the Tourism Events and Excellence Conference.

 

follow on twitter #TEEConference

To register for the conference http://www.teeconference.com/registration.html

To see the programme of the conference http://www.teeconference.com/program.html