IFITT Report 2016INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION FOR IT AND TRAVEL & TOURISM

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Message from the PresidentDear colleagues and friends, I am very happy to share with you my experience as IFITT president in 2016 and to introduce this Annual Report, whose structure I will follow in the next lines.

IFITT Board, Members, and Community. Thanks to the help and commitment of a very dedicated Board and of many other IFITT members, the presence of the IFITT family has grown quite substantially both offline and online. I want to take this opportunity also to thank in particular Barbara Neuhofer, who will not be able to stand for the re-election: IFITT is what it is also thanks to her great dedication as Treasurer and IFITT Next Generation director. Also Nadzeya Kalbaska won’t be able to continue her activity as IFITT General Secretary; her contribution to the IFITT community has been great, and I’m deeply indebted to her for such a fantastic job.

IFITT for Excellence & Networking. In 2016 we have continued the experience of IFITTtalks, which provide the opportunity to our members worldwide to design and run local events, with the scientific, communication and economic support by IFITT. In 2016 we have organized six IFITTtalks: in Australia (two of them), Brazil, Finland, Serbia, and Sweden. As of now, we have already planned an IFITTtalk in China for 2017. In addition to enriching IFITT online educational resources, this year our experts conducted a research on the needed curricula for academic and industry training in eTourism. Its results are going to be presented during ENTER2017 eTourism Conference. IFITT Doctoral Summer School has been co-organized with the Summer School of “UNESCO chair in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites” (USI – Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland), and has taken place in Armeno (Novara, Italy). Achieving great success, the event has attracted attendees from 15 countries. You can enjoy its related videos published on Vimeo. I cannot at all summarize a number of other events we have somehow supported throughout the year, but you will be able to see in the coming pages their extension both in terms of geographical reach, as well as in terms of covered topics.

IFITT for Innovation & Development. In 2016 IFITT has run a series of awards, promoting excellence in research and professional practices. The IFITT Hannes Werthner Tourism and Technology Lifetime Achievement Award, given to an individual who has made significant contributions to the advancement of the field of tourism and technology, has been awarded to the late Gert van der Pijl, whom all of you remember as a great colleague and friend. IFITT has also offered its ICT4D scholarship to junior researchers coming from developing/emerging regions, another sign of our commitment towards an open and sustainable academic and research environment; this time we have supported colleagues from Kenya and Brazil. In 2016 IFITT has also launched the “IFITT Raport project: Rapid App Prototyping and Open Innovation Resource Toolkit”, which offers to interested IFITT members a simple tool to develop mobile apps.

ENTER eTourism Conferences. ENTER2016 in Bilbao (Spain) has provided a major forum for knowledge sharing and networking in a fantastic location, and I am looking

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IFITT Outline & MissionIFITT OutlineIFITT is the leading independent global community for the discussion, exchange and development of knowledge about the use and impact of new information and communication technologies in the travel and tourism industry and experience.

IFITT MissionIFITT mission is to share knowledge, experience, and a true passion for ICT in travel and tourism, being relevant for the industry and responsible for society at large, as well as ensuring scientific excellence.

forward to a memorable ENTER2017 in Rome (Italy). 2018 will mark a milestone in the history of our community, being the 20th anniversary of its official establishment.

IFITT Gadgets. Both the Moleskine notebook, the IFITT pins, and IFITT USB pens have been very well received by our members. Thus, we have decided to go further adding two more gadgets – an IFITT pencil and a water bottle – that can improve the “physical” presence of IFITT in our everyday life, and a deeper sense of belonging by our members.

IFITT partnerships. IFITT has now 50+ corporate members and several partners, which are greatly contributing to our visibility and international growth. In December 2016, together with Nadzeya Kalbaska and Eduardo Santander – IFITT General Secretary and Board member respectively – I had the great honor to meet Mr. Taleb Rifai, Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and his team. We discussed several collaboration opportunities with UNWTO, and I’m looking forward to kick-off the collaboration in 2017.*** I want to thank every board member and all our members and friends for a very successful and enriching 2016.As you know, the United Nations 70th General Assembly has designated 2017 as the “International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development” (#IY2017). I’m sure that the IFITT community will provide a major contribution to it, showing how eTourism can be leveraged to reach such an ambitious and exciting goal.

Yours in eTourism Lugano, December 31st, 2016

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IFITT Board, Members, and Community

Lorenzo CantoniServing IFITT as president.

Professor at USI - Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland. Chair-holder of the UNESCO chair in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites.

Iis TussyadiahServing IFITT as vice president and taking care of IFITT partnerships.

Associate Clinical Professor, Hospitality Business Management, College of Business, Washington State University Vancouver, USA.

Paul BaronServing IFITT as destination and industry ambassador.

Group Manager Online Marketing at Tourism Victoria, Melbourne Australia.

Matthias FuchsServing IFITT as director of IFITT Education.

Professor of Tourism Management & Economics, European Tourism Research Institute (ETOUR), Mid-Sweden University, Sweden.

IFITT President and Board

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Oriol MiralbellServing IFITT board as Director of IFITT national chapters and of Innovation Fund.

Professor at the CETT – Tourism, Hospitality and Food Services Campus of the University of Barcelona, Spain.

Jean-Claude MorandServing IFITT as Industry and Destination ambassador in the French-speaking countries.

CEO and founder of Cyberstrat.net, France.

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Jamie Murphy Serving IFITT in exploring opportunities offered by MOOC movement.

Director of Research, Australian School of Management, Perth, Australia.

Barbara NeuhoferServing IFITT as Treasurer and IFITT Next Generation Director.

Lecturer at Bournemouth University, United Kingdom.

Marianna SigalaServing IFITT as responsible for Members’ benefits and collaborating with IFITT Education.

Professor of Tourism, Business School, University of South Australia, Australia.

Eduardo SantanderServing IFITT as Destination and Industry ambassador.

Executive director of European Travel Commision, Brussels, Belgium.

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Brigitte StanglServing IFITT as responsible for the IFITTtalk initiative.

Lecturer in Tourism at the School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, University of Surrey, United Kingdom.

Zheng (Phil) XiangServing IFITT as Research & Awards Director as well as responsible for the development of IFITT in China.

Assistant Professor at the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Manage-ment, Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech, USA.

Nadzeya KalbaskaServing IFITT as General Secretary.

Post-Doctoral Researcher, Institute for Communication Technologies, Faculty of Communication Sciences, USI – Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland.

Emanuele MeleServing IFITT as Online Communications Officer.

PhD Student in Communication Sciences, USI – Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland.

Ekaterina CivattiServing IFITT as Membership Officer. Master Student in International Tourism, USI – Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland.IFI

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IFITT gathers together scholars and PhD students from the academia, professionals from the travel and tourism industry, and from destination management organizations.

IFITT members are from all over the world, with the majority of them being based in Europe.

The 15 most represented countries are:

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IFITT members’ community and its social media reach

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Members IndustriesLeisure and Travel 23.3%

Hospitality 11.4%

Higher Education 8.9%

Marketing 4.1%

Governments 3.8%

Members FunctionMarketing 33.5%

Sales 10.2%

Operations 8%

Education 7.4%

Consulting 5.6%

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IFITT on LinkedIn

IFITT on Facebook

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InterestsMost unique interestsTravel news: 77%Business news: 64%Technology: 61%Adventure travel: 59%Air travel: 57%Luxury travel: 55%Europe: 54%Hotels: 54%

IFITT on Youtube

IFITT maling list

IFITT on Twitter

159subscribers

69videos

27.4%Open rate

8891minutes of watch time2’56”

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3395 subscribers

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IFITT for Excellence & Networking Hangouts On Air & World Tourism Day 2016

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For its importance in ICT and tourism, IFITT hosted in April 2016 the Hangout on Air on Big Data & Business Intelligence with experts from the academia. Participants were Matthias Fuchs (Professor of Tourism Mananagement & Economics at Mid Sweden University), Wolfram Höpken (Professor of Business Informatics and E-Business at University of Applied Sciences Ravensburg-Weingarten), Rodolfo Baggio (Professor of Computer Science at the Bocconi University), and Zheng Xiang (Assistant Professor at Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech, USA).

The second Hangout on Air hosted by IFITT took place in May 2016. The topic of the presentation was the winner of the IFITT Innovation Fund 2016, the IFITT RAPORT project: Rapid App Prototyping and Open Innovation Resource Toolkit. The participants were Lorenzo Cantoni (IFITT Presindent) and John Bustard (Doctoral Researcher & Tutor from Ulster University).

For the celebration of the World Tourism Day 2016, the IFITT President, Lorenzo Cantoni, participated as a speaker at the Tourism Leaders’ Summit & International Symposium 2016 at University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Do you want to be featured in IFITT Intreviews?Drop us an email to ifitt@ifitt.org

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IFITT Doctoral SchoolIFITT Doctoral Summer School is a unique platform for knowledge and idea exchange in the field of Travel and Tourism technologies. The summer school provides inspirational and practical insights on the actual and future technological trends. Early-career researchers, both at Master and Doctoral level, can familiarize themselves with various research methodologies and are introduced to the world of academic publishing.

The fourth IFITT Doctoral Summer School happened at Casa dei Padri, Armeno (Italy), at the end of August 2016. This year IFITT Doctoral Summer School has been co-chaired by professor Lorenzo Cantoni and Silvia De Ascaniis.

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To provide a better overview to our virtual community, we have produced three videos focusing on different facets of the IFITT Doctoral Summer School. All of them are freely available on the video-sharing website Vimeo.

“IFITT Doctoral Summer School participants”

“Lorenzo Cantoni speaks about IFITT Doctoral Summer School”

“IFITT Doctoral Summer School: The whole miracle of travel”

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Co-organized by the “UNESCO Chair in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites”, the IFITT Doctoral Summer School has attracted 17 participants from 15 countries, creating a unique multicultural environment.

Including excursions and group works, the topic of this year has been “Information and Communication Technologies for Promotion and Development of Sustainable Tourism at Cultural and Religious Heritage Sites (ICT4CulT)”.

Learn more: ifitt.org/ifitt-doctoral-summer-school

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IFITTtalk@SantaCatarina Technology Innovation on Tourism Florianopolis City, Brazil – May 3-4, 2016

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IFITTtalk@Helsinki Mobile Technology in Travel and Tourism Helsinki, Finland – January 21-22, 2016

IFITTtalk@Östersund Big Data & Business Intelligence in Travel & Tourism DomainÖstersund, Sweden – April 11-12, 2016

IFITTtalk

This year IFITT has continued a new format of supporting independent organization of workshops that deal with topics related to eTourism. The main objectives of the IFITTtalk workshops is to spark conversations, introduce new approaches, stay informed, find strategic partners and networks, transfer knowledge between academia and the industry. In 2016 six successful events took place, while enriching discussion about eTourism and increasing the footprint of our association globally.

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IFITTtalk@BelgradeVirtualization of Congresses in the Tourism Domain Belgrade, Serbia – October 21, 2016

IFITTtalk@AdelaideBig data & Customer Engagement in Tourism Adelaide, Australia– September 8, 2016

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gIFITTtalk@Adelaide The Sharing Economy and Technology Advances in Tourism Adelaide, Australia – November 9, 2016

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IFITT Education and InnovationAs part of its Social Corporate Responsibility and its agenda to further enlarge the global eTourism community, IFITT is keen to disseminate knowledge about Tourism and Technology. We would like to encourage students, trainers and scholars from around the world, to access educational material and information to enhance their topical understanding.

The transmission of technical and intellectual skills and concepts through a variety of learning experiences enables learning individuals to develop career opportunities in today’s multicultural and technology-driven working society. IFITT supports this challenge around “life-long learning” by providing an eTourism curriculum that is based on stakeholders’ and pedagogical needs, and by updating a list of Tourism related MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses.

Further eTourism learning and resource material can be found in the IFITT Digital Library: full abstracts and bibliographical data from the two major research resources in the field of eTourism, namely the ENTER Proceedings “Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism” and the Journal of Information Technology & Tourism (JITT) is accessible in the Digital Library. IFITT members get access to the full ENTER Proceedings (2005-2017) through the Members area. In addition, the IFITT eTourism Wiki is a theme-specific Wikipedia and comprises already more than 40 topics in the field of eTourism, ranging from ICT applications in the various tourism and travel industries, over smart phone applications, recommender systems, data mining and online auctions in tourism.

Moreover, the IFITT eTourism Knowledge Map shows updated bibliographical data on e-Tourism research and e-Tourism courses from currently 21 universities and institutions worldwide.

In 2016 IFITT has also launched the “IFITT Raport project: Rapid App Prototyping and Open Innovation Resource Toolkit”, which offers to interested IFITT members a simple tool to develop mobile apps.

For more information on IFITT Education, please, check here: ifitt.org/resources

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Events

Confirmed Upcoming Events for 2017:January 24-26, 2017 – ENTER2017 eTourism Conference – Rome, Italy

February 15-17, 2017 – 1st UNWTO World Conference on Smart Destinations – Murcia, Spain

April 18 – 22, 2017 – 5th UNESCO UNITWIN Conference – Coimbra, Portugal

August 21, 2017 – IFITTtalk@Hangzhou – Hangzhou, Republic of China

September 27-29, 2017 – Heritage, Tourism and Hospitality, International Conference – Pori, Finland

Events in 2016:November 9-11, 2016 – Smart Tourism Congress – Barcelona, Spain

November 9, 2016 – IFITTtalk@Adelaide – The Sharing Economy and Technology Advances in Tourism – Adelaide, Australia

October 27-28, 2016 – TURITEC: ICT & Tourism International Conference – Malaga, Spain

October 22-23, 2016 – International conference on Big Data 2016 – Taipei, Republic of China

October 21, 2016 – IFITTtalk@Belgrade – Virtualization of Congresses in the Tourism Domain – Belgrade, Serbia

October 20, 2016 – Brennpunkt eTourism – Salzburg, Austria

October 19-22, 2016 – Global Issues in Leadership and Management – Malta

September 11-14, 2016 – Valuing and Evaluating Creativity for Sustainable Regional Development conference (VEC) – Östersund, Sweden

September 8, 2016 – IFITTtalk@Adelaide – Big data & Customer Engagement in Tourism – Adelaide, Australia

September 15, 2016 – RecTour 2016: ACM RecSys Workshop on Recommenders in Tourism – Boston, USA

September 8, 2016 – IFITTtalk Workshop – Big data & Customer Engagement in Tourism – Adelaide, Australia

August 29 – September 9, 2016 – IFITT Doctoral Summer School 2016 – Armeno (NO), Italy

September 2-3, 2016 – Online Travel Market – Hurghada 2016 – Hurghada, Egypt

June 28, 2016 – eTourism: harnessing technology to increase competitiveness – Bournemouth, United Kingdom

June 28, 2016 – Accessible Tourism: a benefit to everyone – Bournemouth, United Kingdom

June 12-16, 2016 – Tourism and Cultural Landscapes: Towards A Sustainable Approach – Budapest, Hungary

June 7, 2016 – TTI & ETOA Summer Forum 2016 – London, United Kingdom

May 23-24, 2016 – ISCONTOUR 2016 – 4th International Student Conference in Tourism Research – Krems, Austria

May 3-4, 2016 – IFITTtalk@SantaCatarina – 2nd Brazil/Spain Seminar in Technology Innovation on Tourism – Santa Catarina, Brazil

April 11-12, 2016 – IFITTtalk@Östersund: Big Data & Business Intelligence in the Travel & Tourism Domain – Östersund, Sweden

March 29-31, 2016 – World Travel Market – Latin America – São Paulo, Brazil

March 15, 2016 – TTI Spring Conference 2016 – The Ux Revolution – London, United Kingdom

February 2-5, 2016 – ENTER2016 eTourism Conference – Bilbao, Spain

January 21st-22, 2016 – IFITTtalk@Helsinki – Helsinki, Finland

Check updated list of upcoming events here: ifitt.org/events

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gIFITT Awards 2016IFITT Outstanding Industry Contribution Award The Award is given to enterprises that make a significant contribution to the growth and success of technology adoption, integration, or use in the tourism industry.Startup Enterprises: Travel Appeal / Duetto / LocomoteEstablished Enterprises: Seekda / Rome2Rio / Aliathon Holiday Village

IFITT Innovative Destination AwardThe Award is given to destination marketing/management organizations (DMOs) that have very successfully integrated technology.- Greek National Tourism Organisation- Visit Kent- Ticino Turismo

IFITT Hannes Werthner Tourism and Technology Lifetime Achievement AwardThe Hannes Werthner Tourism and Technology Lifetime Achievement Award is given to an individual from academia, industry or government, who has made significant contributions to the advancement of the field/practice of tourism and technology.The winner of 2016 award is:Professor Gert van der Pijl, Erasmus University Rotterdam (in memoriam).

IFITT Journal Paper of the Year Award1. Zhiwei Liu and Sangwon Park (2015). “What makes a useful online review? Implication for travel product websites”, Tourism Management, 47, 140-151.2. Nigel L. Williams, Alessandro Inversini, Dimitrios Buhalis and Nicole Ferdinand (2015). “Community Crosstalk: An exploratory analysis of destination and festival eWOM on Twitter”, Journal of Marketing Management, 31, 1113-1140.3. Huy Quan Vu, Gang Li, Rob Law and Ben Haobin Ye (2015). “Exploring the travel behaviors of inbound tourists to Hong Kong using geotagged photos”, Tourism Management, 46, 222-232.

IFITT Thesis Excellence AwardThe Thesis Excellence Award awards students who successfully defended their theses in the field of tourism and technology between October 1, 2014 and September 30, 2015.Category Master: Yao Lan, University of Queensland (Australia), for her thesis on “Identifying differences in hospitality experiences across accommodation options”Category PhD: John Fotis, Bournemouth University (United Kingdom), for his thesis “The Use of Social Media and Its Impacts on Consumer Behaviour: The Context of Holiday Travel”

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ENTER Conference Best Paper Award 20161. Iis Tussyadiah. “Strategic self-presentation in the sharing economy: Implications for host branding.”2. Matthias Braunhofer and Francesco Ricci. “Contextual Information Elicitation in Travel Recommender Systems.”3. Wolfgang Wörndl and Alexander Hefele. “Generating Paths Through Discovered Places-of-Interests for City Trip Planning.”

IFITT Best PhD Proposal Award 20161. Ella Cranmer, Manchester Metropolitan University (United Kingdom). “The development of a Business Model for the implementation of Augmented Reality.”2. Katarzyna Minor, Cardiff Metropolitan University (United Kingdom). “The effects of hotels engagement with daily deal websites on employment patterns and employee wellbeing.”3. Jang Won Moon, Clemson University (United States). “Will Uses and Gratifications Theory help us understand eTourists use of smartphones?”

IFITT ICT4D ScholarshipGrislayne Guedes Lopes Da Silva, University of São Paulo (Brazil)David Karienye, Garissa University College (Kenya)

Best IFITTtalk of the yearIFITTtalk@Colombo – “Modern ICT for interactive Tourism Learning and Education”, organized in Colombo (Sri Lanka) in October 2015.

Check the details at ifitt.org/awards-and-scholarships

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ENTER eTourism ConferencesThe Major Annual Event of the IFITT CommunityThe conference offers a worldwide and unique forum for attendees from industry, academia, 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 in travel and tourism.

The conference brings together the research community with industry, and it is organized in three streams: industry, destinations, and research tracks. The conference also features several world-class keynote speakers.

ENTER conference proceedings are published by Springer. The full list of them can be found on the members-only section of IFITT website. ENTER Proceedings are ranked among the 20 “Top publications – Tourism & Hospitality” by Google Scholar. ENTER research notes and short papers are published by the e-Review of Tourism Research.

Previous ENTER Conferences1994 Innsbruck, Austria 1995 Innsbruck, Austria 1996 Innsbruck, Austria 1997 Edinburgh, UK1998 Istanbul, Turkey 1999 Innsbruck, Austria 2000 Barcelona, Spain 2001 Montreal, Canada 2002 Innsbruck, Austria 2003 Helsinki, Finland 2004 Cairo, Egypt 2005 Innsbruck, Austria 2006 Lausanne, Switzerland 2007 Ljubljana, Slovenia 2008 Innsbruck, Austria 2009 Amsterdam, Holland 2010 Lugano, Switzerland 2011 Innsbruck, Austria 2012 Helsingborg, Sweden 2013 Innsbruck, Austria 2014 Dublin, Ireland 2015 Lugano, Switzerland2016 Bilbao, Spain

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2017 Rome, ItalyENTER2017 will be organized by Symposia srl and in collaboration with Roma Tre University will be taking place on January 24-27, 2017

2018 Jönköping, SwedenENTER2018 will be organized by Destination Jönköping and it will take place on January 23-26, 2018

Please visit www.enter2018.org

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PartnershipsThis year IFITT has successfully collaborated with the following institutions

If you are interested in developing a partnership with IFITT, please, contact us at ifitt@ifitt.org

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IFITT GadgetsTo promote a stronger identity and sense of belonging, IFITT Board has prepared a range of gadgets in 2016: IFITT pin, IFITT pencils, and IFITT water bottle.

IFITT Legal addressc/o MCI Management Center InnsbruckUniversitätsstr. 15, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria www.ifitt.org

IFITT Secretariat c/o webatelier.net USI – Università della Svizzera italiana via Buffi 13, 6900 Lugano, Switzerland+41586664649 ifitt@ifitt.org