IFITT Hannes Werthner Tourism and Technology Lifetime Achievement Award
The Hannes Werthner Tourism and Technology Lifetime Achievement Award is given to an individual from academia, industry or government, who has made significant contributions to the advancement of the field/practice of tourism and technology.The award is named after Hannes Werthner, a pioneer in the eTourism field and founder of the ENTER conference and IFITT community in the 1990s. Hannes influenced the field, both through his extensive scientific and entrepreneurial contributions.
The 2023 Hannes Werthner has been presented to: Ulrike Gretzel
This prestigious award celebrates a lifetime of contributions that have had a lasting impact on academia, industry, and global research communities.
IFITT 2025 Journal Papers of the Year Award
Recognizing outstanding academic publications, the IFITT Journal Paper of the Year Award highlights research that has made a significant impact in the fields of IT and tourism.
📖 1st place – Andrei Kirilenko and Svetlana Stepchenkova. Facilitating topic modeling in tourism research: Comprehensive comparison of new AI technologies (Tourism Management)
📖 2nd place – Fachri Eka Saputra, Dimitrios Buhalis, Marcjanna M. Augustyn and Stefanos Marangos. Anthropomorphism-based artificial intelligence (AI) robots typology in hospitality and tourism (Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology)
📖 3rd place – Carlos Flavian, Sergio Ibanez-Sanchez, Carlos Orús and Sergio Barta. The dark side of the metaverse: The role of gamification in event virtualization (International Journal of Information Management)
JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM TECHNOLOGY PAPER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2025
The JHTT Paper of the Year Award celebrates high-impact research published in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology.
📖 Ismael Gómez-Talal, Lydia González-Serrano, José Luis Rojo-Álvarez, Pilar Talón-Ballestero. Avoiding food waste from restaurant tickets: a big data management tool
JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & TOURISM PAPER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2025
The JITT Paper of the Year Award recognizes innovative research published in the Journal of Information Technology & Tourism.
📖 Anna Dalla Vecchia, Sara Migliorini, Elisa Quintarelli, Mauro Gambini & Alberto Belussi. Promoting sustainable tourism by recommending sequences of attractions with deep reinforcement learning
ENTER Conference Best Full Paper Award 2025
Awarded annually at the ENTER conference since 2013. The winners are selected by the conference scientific committee and the conference research track chairs from the submitted and double-blind peer reviewed papers.
📖 1st place – Dandison C. Ukpabi. User roles in blockchain-based tokenization travel platforms
📖 2nd place – Zehui Wang, Sebastian Schwarzenbacher, Wolfram Höpken and Matthias Fuchs. Do Travel Destinations Meet My Expectations? A Comparison of Tourists’ Perceptions and Destinations’ Self-Presentation through Instagram Posts
📖 3rd place – Michael Beier and Katrin Schillo. Sources of Restaurant Recommendations and their Importance for Consumers in Known and Unknown Areas – Evidence from Germany and Switzerland
ENTER Conference Working Paper Award 2025
The award has been created in 2020 following an introduction of new format of submissions in 2020. The winners are selected by the conference scientific committee and the conference research track chairs from the submitted and double-blind peer reviewed papers.
📖 1st place – Huy Quan Vu, Baobao Song, Gang Li and Rob Law. Travel experience analysis based on visual concept modelling from travel photos
📖 2nd place – Gus Guanrong Liu, Pierre Benckendorff and Gabby Walters. Robotic Hospitableness: The Role of Nonverbal Communication in Enhancing Guest-Robot Interactions
📖 3rd place – Sergio Ibáñez-Sánchez, Carlos Flavián, Carlos Orús and Carlos Velasco. Virtual reality meets gastronomy tourism: the use of sensory-enabling technologies in tasting experiences
ENTER Poster Award 2025
The Best Poster Award acknowledges the most impactful and well-presented poster at the conference.
📖 1st place – Yoo Ri Kim, Chaithanya Renduchintala and Wei Wei. Conceptualizing Digital Twins in Hospitality and Tourism: Through the Lens of the Social Ecological Framework
IFITT Ph.D. Thesis Excellence Award
Awarded to Doctoral level thesis following nominations by IFITT community.
🥇 1st Place: Sofia Blanco Moreno: AI-powered insights: Analyzing visual and textual content on social media for destination marketing management
🥈 2nd Place: Mattia Rainoldi: Managing Work and Leisure in the Digital Age: A Practice Exploration of Digital Nomadism
🥉 3rd Place: Marta Flavian Lázaro: Understanding influencer marketing and their impact on consumer behavior: from human to virtual influencers
IFITT Ph.D. Master’s Thesis Excellence Award
Awarded to Master level thesis following nominations by IFITT community.
🥇 1st Place: Alexander Pippi: Investigating the critical success factors for knowledge management and the impact of knowledge management on financial performance in tourism SMEs: mediating role of organizational learning
ENTER Conference Best PhD Proposal Award 2025
Awarded annually during the PhD workshop day, which takes place prior to ENTER conference . The winners are selected by the PhD workshop scientific committee and the PhD workshop chairs from the submitted and double-blind reviewed submissions.
🥇 1st Place: Marta Salvador-Almela, Jordi Arcos-Pumarola and Estela Marine-Roig. Title: Social media’s role in shaping tourism imagery and experiences: a case study of volunteer tourism
🥈 2nd Place: Xiaoxi Yu and Mingming Cheng. Title: Developing and empirically testing a multimodal methodological approach in tourism
🥉 3rd Place: Luona Zhao, Jie Wang and Pierre Benckendorff. Title: Balance Risk and Romance: The Role of Emotions in Female Tourists’ Online Self-Disclosure Behaviour
Congratulations, well done and thank you for your contribution!
IFITT would like to thank Director of Research Excellence Katerina Berezina for overseeing the award identification processes. Last but not least, our sincere gratitude goes to the awards committee and colleagues in it, and, in particular, to Lyndon Nixon, Aarni Tuomi, and Peter O’Connor (research track chairs), Jacques Bulchand-Gidumal (IFITT president), and Ulrike Gretzel, Kasha Minor, Rodolfo Baggio, Arkadiusz Tomczyk and Agnieszka Pawlak-Wolanin (Ph.D. workshop co-chairs) for organising and supporting the process.