MU shines at ENTER2015 conference

Faculties from MU’s Department of Tourism and Service Management recently made a tremendous achievement at the 22nd annual ENTER conference (ENTER2015) – the biggest eTourism community event organized by the International Federation for Information Technology and Travel and Tourism – in Lugano, Switzerland on February 2 – 5 2015.

Prof. Josef Mazanec (Full Professor) was named as the recipient of the Hannes Werthner Tourism and Technology Lifetime Achievement Award 2014 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the advancement of the knowledge and practice of tourism and technology. Being one of the pioneers who introduced the destination recommender system, the Award Committee complimented that Prof. Mazanec’s academic contribution in the eTourism field is truly incomparable. The Chair of the Awards Committee also praised that Prof. Mazanec is the best role model any junior researcher could hope for.

Mr. Daniel Leung (Researcher and Lecturer) won the Best PhD Proposal Award for his doctoral proposal titled “Perceived usefulness of online hotel reviews: Influence of review content and review source”, supervised by MU’s Associate Professor Dr. Astrid Dickinger. Integrating the knowledge from marketing and communication disciplines, Daniel’s proposal outlined that three content-related features and three source-related features are potential determinants affecting readers’ perceived helpfulness of online hotel reviews. Harnessing an experimental research design, Daniel noted that the finding of his proposed study is expected to enrich the knowledge about online review usefulness as well as to benefit tourism and hospitality practitioners by providing them with clues for improving their viral marketing efficacy.

Dr. Irem Önder (Assistant Professor) and Ms. Lidija Lalicic (Researcher and Lecturer) also presented their cutting-edge research findings at the conference. Dr. Önder presented two research papers titled “Linked data for cross-domain decision-making in tourism” (conducted in collaboration with Dr. Marta Sabou and Mr. Adrian Brasoveanu from MU’s Department of New Media Technology) and “Reframing the image of a destination: A pre-post study on social media exposure” (conducted in collaboration with Dr. Elena Marchiori from Università della Svizzera Italiana). Lidija presented an interesting study titled “This city is absolutely fun and trendy: A destination brand personality analysis in a Web 2.0 setting”, which was written in collaboration with Dr. Dickinger.

MU congratulates Prof. Mazanec and Daniel on their awards, and wishes their achievement at ENTER2015 continues onto ENTER2016 at Bilbao, Spain!

Photo: L-R Lidija Lalicic, Irem Önder and Daniel Leung