Dr. Bozana Zekan wins the Dr. Maria Schaumayer Stiftung award

Dr. Bozana Zekan was recently awarded the prestigious Dr. Maria Schaumayer Stiftung recognition award for her doctoral dissertation titled “Identifying Efficient Tourism Destinations and Modeling an Optimal Benchmarking Approach in a DEA Environment”. She completed her doctoral studies with honors at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) last year, and her assessors, Dr. Karl Wöber and Dr. Gunther Maier, as well as the head of MU’s department of Tourism and Service Management Dr. Dagmar Lund-Durlacher, were so impressed with her work they encouraged her to apply. The Dr. Maria Schaumayer Stiftung award is targeted at female researchers in Austria, irrespective of the scientific discipline. She joins fellow Modulian Lidija Lalicic on the list of recipients, who received the award last year for her PhD research in the field of innovation management in tourism and the use of ICT

“I am indeed happy for receiving this recognition” says Bozana. “I did not have my hopes up as I know that it is a quite competitive award, yet it did not hurt to try. Also, it is the first time that I actually applied for any award in Austria, so it is fair to say that this was a nice surprise that I was informed about just before Christmas! I worked very hard on my dissertation and closed this chapter at WU successfully. But it means a lot to me to have such a support from my colleagues at MODUL University Vienna and to receive an additional recognition for my research, especially when it comes from the foundation as respected as Dr. Maria Schaumayer Stiftung.”

Bozana has been at MODUL University since 2008 and nealy all of our bachelor students have taken her classes such as Tourism and Hospitality Business Analysis, HR Management and Management Development, Organizational Behavior and CSR, Philosophy of Science, and International Destination Management. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she is also the lead organizer of the annual TourMIS Workshop, liaison officer for San Francisco State University, member of the University Senate, and the Open Office Advisor.

She is also a passionate researcher, with a core research interest in destination management. Her doctoral dissertation evolved around efficiency/competitiveness analyses, KPIs, and inclusion of weighting into the benchmarking endeavors of city tourism destinations. When not teaching, she continues to pursue this stream of research. Currently, she is involved in the competitive analysis of Airbnb listings (sharing economy) with Dr. Ulrich Gunter and Dr. Irem Önder, and is also working on the ERASMUS+ project proposal with Dr. Dagmar Lund-Durlacher.

Congratulations to Bozana on winning this prestigious award!