Testimonials of ENTER2011 Chairs

Rob Law, Research Track Chair:

“With an over 17-year history in the academia, ENTER eTour-ism Conferences have long been recognized as the world’s largest annual event on information and communication technologies (ICTs) and tourism. In the 18th ENTER eTourism Conference, in view of the synergistic interaction between technology and tourism has been continuously transforming the structures of the tourism industry, the ENTER2011 conference theme of “eTourism: Present and Future Interaction” emphasizes the role of IT on facilitating global interactions between players around the world. In the past few months, nearly 100 research papers were submitted by re-searchers in the fields of tourism and IT around the world. In view of the popularity and prominent functionality of social media and mobile tech-nology in connecting travelers with tourism destinations or organizations, these two technologies and their applications are the most researched areas among all ENTER2011 submissions. Consistent with the papers sub-mitted to ENTER Conferences in the past, most submitted papers are of high quality that bring up innovative research ideas with insightful find-ings and implications. On behalf of the Research Track Chairs, we would like to give special thanks to all contributors for their interest and willing-ness to share their great ideas and findings in ENTER2011. In addition to the contribution by the authors, the Research Track Chairs would also like to thank all Research Program Committee members and shadow review-ers for their rigorous reviews and useful comments to ameliorate the au-thors’ work. Without their support, the reviewing process cannot be un-dergone as successful as expected. At present, the reviewing process comes to the final stage. We look forward to exchanging the latest ideas and findings to the worldwide audience at the end of January 2011.”

Robert Govers, ENTER2011 Destination Track Chair:

“ENTER 2011 will see some exciting sessions as part of the destination track. The ‘hot issues’ that DMOs are currently struggling with, are all on the programme. With the conference theme of ‘interaction’ what better topic then Social Media to start with on the Wednesday morning with the kick-off of the track sessions after the first keynote address. Anthony Rawlins of Digital Visitor ma-kes a considerable contribution to this first session. The rest of the Wednesday will be dedicated to questions related to the very reason for existence of DMOs and the boundaries of their online re-sponsibilities. Gilbert Archdale, director of ASW Consulting with managerial experience at the Bri-tish Tourist Authority, has put two interesting sessions together, first about the question whether DMOs should set-up their own online booking systems or not, followed by a late afternoon session on the impacts of state aid issues that are currently being discussed at the European Commission. The outcome of these discussions might have a considerable impact on DMOs and their role in on- and offline destination marketing. For the Thursday morning, the efforts to strengthen the cooperation between IFITT and ETC, has resulted in ETC ta-king charge of a full destination track session. We are delighted to have Andrew Daines coordinate this session, while also taking the floor as speaker together with representatives of three DMOs with interesting stories to tell. The Thur-sday afternoon will offer a similarly delightful session for which Olaf Nitz of the Austrian National Tourist Office has made an effort to bring some great speakers together on the relevant topic of the Mobile DMO. The same level of relevance will continue into the third and last day on the Friday with, in the morning, contributions by Joobili.com, Vancouver Olympics and Invat.tur-Valencia on the issue of consumer inspiration through ICTs. Finally, we close the destination track on Friday afternoon with a session on e-accessibility of tourism, coordinated by Ivor Ambrose of the European Network for Accessible Tourism asbl.”

Rodolfo Baggio, ENTER2011 Industry Track Chair:

“In many disciplines a gap is often felt between the industrial and the academic worlds. Tourism is no exception, even if this gap is probably smaller than in many other situations. Conferences and meetings devote time and efforts in attempting to close this gap. ENTER organizers are obviously aware of this issue, but, instead of carrying on this practice of discussions have adopted a “practical” approach which has proved much more effective. The Industry Track at ENTER 2011 con-tinues the now consolidated tradition of providing a space in which representatives from industry and academia can discuss common themes and promote cross-fertilization.

In the next edition, as on previous occasions, a number of invited sessions will deal with topics that are of great inter-est and have warmed up the debate internationally.

The sessions on schedule up to now are dedicated to China tourism, specialized tourism search engines, hotel tech-nologies, performance measurement and business impact of social media and e-learning in Tourism and Hospitality. During the sessions academicians and practitioners together will have the possibility to listen to presentations on the state of the art and to discuss the main issues and challenges.

ENTER2011 novelty is, as known, the open call for Industry Cases. Along with the traditional call for academic contri-butions, this year the industry community has been asked to provide examples, case studies, applications and testi-monials. The results have greatly exceeded the expectations and a number of submissions have been received. A dozen proposals have been selected by the organizing committee. ENTER2011 participants will be able to attend ses-sions in which they can be seen and discussed. The topics examined will be many. Mobile technologies are examined by looking at a survey and tests conducted on several mobile applications, mobile destination websites, interactive guides to points of interest. More “traditional” uses of ICTs regard a city trip planner, a collaborative atlas, tech-niques to merge different types of data (raw, multimedia, editorial) in order to satisfy specific marketing needs and the issues concerning the spread of tourism ICTs in developing countries. Hoteliers will be able to see how to use online reviews for improving their products and services.

We are sure that the lessons learned from these examples will prove interesting and effective for the development knowledge in the e-tourism arena and provide many new ideas.”