Bournemouth University eTourism Lab will contribute to the ENTER 2015 Digital Tourism conference in Lugano, from 3-6 February. This top event in Information Technology in Tourism will once again bring the eTourism community together for an exciting week of events organised around the conference theme “eTourism: Transforming Mobility”. Several members from the eTourism Lab will present their research during this conference.
The ENTER 2015 conference will explore the opportunities in eTourism as well as the challenges within the eTourism mobility sphere, focusing on exploring information and communication technologies (ICT), business models in travel and tourism, and the way to apply them to business. The conference programme is organised in three streams. In particular the research stream will focus on the discussion of successfully submitted conference papers by BU eTourism students and academics (see programme). The following BU eTourism Lab members will present:
- Kim Boes, Dimitrios Buhalis and Alessandro Inversini: Conceptualising Smart Tourism Destination Dimensions
- Barbara Neuhofer, Dimitrios Buhalis and Adele Ladkin: Technology as a Catalyst of Change: Enablers and Barriers of the Tourist Experience and their Consequences
- Dimitrios Buhalis and Aditya Amaranggana: Smart Tourism Destinations Enhancing Tourism Experience through Personalisation of Services
- Dimitrios Buhalis and Emmanouil Mamalakis: Social Media Return on Investment and Performance Evaluation in the Hotel Industry Context
- Alessandro Inversini, Isabella Rega, Isabella Nunes Pereira and Roberto Bartholo: The Rise of eTourism For Development
- Kim Boes, Larissa Borde and Roman Egger: The Acceptance of NFC Smart Posters in Tourism
- Alessandro Inversini, Rogan Sage, Nigel Williams and Dimitrios Buhalis: The Social Impact of Events in Social Media Conversation
The conference also includes a PhD Workshop where PhD students interactively discuss their research proposals with peers, colleagues, leading supervisors and scholars in the eTourism field. Among them will be two PhD candidates from Bournemouth University:
- Kim Boes: Smart Tourism Destinations: Explore how smartness improves competitiveness in the context of tourism destinations
- Carmen Martins: Innovation practices in Alternative Tourism
All papers have been published in the conference proceedings ‘Information and Communication Technologies Tourism 2015. Proceedings of the International Conference in Lugano, Switserland’, which will accessible for IFITT members on the IFITT Website (www.ifitt.org) and can be purchased online.
Director of the eTourism Lab, Bournemouth University Professor Dimitrios Buhalis believes that the ENTER conference created the possibility for discussion of the cutting edge developments in the sphere of eTourism applications and technology. ‘Having attended all ENTERs in the last 20 years I have observed the rise of technology in tourism as we cocreated the conceptual development at the conference. For me it is an absolutely must attend event to open your horizons’.
The ENTER 2015 expects more than 350 participants and is a must-attend event for experts from academia and industry who are keen on staying updated about the latest news about information and communication technology in travel and tourism. Registrations for ENTER 2015 are still open. Don’t miss out and register now on the website at http://www.enter2015.org/Registration-64.htm