IFITT is pleased to announce that Professors Aurkene Alzua-Sorzabal and Alessandro Inversini will chair ENTER26.
Both Aurkene and Alessandro have been members of the IFITT/ENTER community for a long time and have been actively involved in organizing previous ENTER events in various roles. In addition, they will be joined by Professor Jessika Weber from Breda University of Applied Sciences, who will act as a Local Chair of the Conference.
ENTER26 Chairs
Dr. Alzua-Sorzabal received a PhD in International Tourism from Purdue University, USA. Currently, she holds a dual affiliation, to Nebrija University and the University of Deusto. She is a co-founder of Lurmetrika Labs and leads the Research Group on Smart Tourism Research and Innovation at Nebrija University. She has been the Executive Director of the Competence Research Center Research in Tourism, CICtourGUNE. Dr. Alzua-Sorzabal has coordinated several academic programs, among them the Erasmus Mundus Master of Arts in Euroculture. In addition, she has headed several competitive research projects and collaborated with the Basque, Spanish, and international public administrations. Dr Alzua-Sorzabal’s scope of research focuses on tourism, smart destinations, and advanced analytic. She is the author of several articles dealing with tourism and information technology. She is a board member of the Journal of Information Technology.
Dr. Inversini is Professor at the EHL – Hospitality Business School. He is and expert in digital communication and his research focuses on the role of digital transformation in society. Moreover, Dr. Inversini has an extensive international academic experience at Università della Svizzera italiana, Bournemouth University, and Henley Business School (University of Reading). During his career Alessandro engaged with industry as a consultant (with businesses ranging from star-ups to established firms) and as managing director of ticinoinfo SA, the public-private regional competence center for digital media innovation in travel of the Ticino Region (Switzerland). Alessandro’s research has been funded and supported by public and private bodies in Switzerland, Italy and United Kingdom and has been published in prestigious
Dr. Jessika Weber-Sabil is the professor for Digital Transformation in Cultural Tourism at the Academy for Tourism of Breda University of Applied Sciences (NL). Jessika holds a PhD from Bournemouth University (UK), where she explored the mobile game experience of tourists with location-based augmented reality games in urban environments. The influence of digital technologies on the tourism system and individual tourist experience, is what captivated Jessika’s research interest throughout since her master studies on Tourism and Innovation Management at the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg (Austria) and the University of Applied Sciences in Western Switzerland. Her research interests cover the application of games in travel and tourism to explain complex systems, policy development to further extended realities and the influence of digital transformation for cultural, heritage, tourism, and society.
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