MU hosts the 7th TourMIS Users’ Workshop

MODUL University Vienna was pleased to host two major events on September 15 and 16, 2011: the 7th TourMIS Users’ Workshop (day 1) and the International Seminar on New Media Analysis and Strategies for Tourism Marketing Organizations (day 2). Both workshop and seminar are an initiative jointly organized by European Cities Marketing, European Travel Commission and MODUL University Vienna on annual basis.

This year’s events had the record number of 103 delegates coming from 25 different countries. What proved to be correct again is that TourMIS Workshop is an established annual event that brings together both delegates and speakers, so one could see a number of familiar faces in the audience. Majority of delegates represented city and national tourist organizations, as well as universities and companies from the hospitality and tourism industry.

First day’s workshop provided an introduction to, as well as an overview of the new features in TourMIS (www.tourmis.info), and was revolving primarily around the topic of benchmarking tourism destinations. The workshop was led by Dr. Karl Wöber, President of MODUL University Vienna and developer of TourMIS, and was further enriched by the contributions of the experienced TourMIS users: Kathrin Heintschel (Vienna Tourist Board), Vincent Nijs (Toerisme Vlaanderen), Tünde Mester (Hungarian National Tourist Office), and Irem Arsal (MODUL University Vienna). As such, this workshop was a unique outlet to meet the developer of TourMIS himself and to discuss further upcoming features together.

The focus of the second day’s seminar shifted towards the topics of media monitoring, web mining and visualization on one hand and towards mobile applications and user behavior on the other. Number of speakers, both academics (represented by Francesco Ricci, Arno Scharl, Astrid Dickinger, Florian Aubke, Clemens Költringer, and Irem Arsal) and practitioners (Manfred Hackl, Camille Benoist, Olivier Ponti, Olaf Nitz, and Paul Hennessy) shared their expertise within this research area. Extra add-ons this year were the optional wellness sessions on ‘breathexperience’, held by a certified health-pedagogue and practitioner of Middendorf Breathwork, Mrs. Gabriele Rinner.

Both events were kindly sponsored by Vienna Tourist Board and Austrian National Tourist Office and we would like to thank them for their continuous support. For anyone who would like to have a quick peek or would like to know more about these events, a detailed program, speakers’ information, all presentations, and a picture gallery can be found on our website: www.modul.ac.at/tourmis

We are all looking forward to the next year’s workshop!