The International Federation for Information Technology and Travel & Tourism (IFITT) presents the next IFITT Webinar. These webinars aim to bring together global experts to share knowledge, inspire innovation, and explore the evolving landscape of technology and tourism. The next webinar is titled “AI & Big Data in Tourism: From Research to Practice”.
This presentation provides an overview of the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data Analytics in the tourism domain. It introduces the historical development of AI, explains key concepts and discusses the main strengths and limitations of AI technologies. Building on this foundation, the presentation explores a range of AI applications in tourism, including recommender systems, intelligent travel assistants, and data-driven personalization. Several case studies illustrate current research and practical implementations, including LLM-based point-of-interest recommendation and AI-based multi-agent systems for automated travel planning. Finally, the presentation highlights current trends and future developments in the field, with a particular focus on Large Language Models (LLMs), AI agents, knowledge graphs, and decentralized inter-agent networks. These emerging technologies are discussed as key building blocks for the next generation of intelligent, adaptive, and personalized tourism systems.
(More information about the speakers at the end of the page.)
Registration closes at 11:59 AM CEST on Wednesday, May 27th.
Wolfram Höpken is professor for Business Informatics and eBusiness at the University of Applied Sciences Ravensburg-Weingarten and director of the Institute for Digital Transformation as well as director of the LAB4DTE (LAB for Digital Transformation & Entrepreneurship). His main research fields are artificial intelligence, data science and big data analytics, semantic web as well as ICT systems in Tourism. Wolfram Höpken has been vice-president, commercial director and member of the management board of IFITT for more than 15 years. He has been research track chair of the ENTER conference and overall chair of ENTER. He has chaired the CEN/ISSS workshop eTOUR dealing with harmonization in the field of tourism. Wolfram Höpken is a regular speaker on the topic of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science in Tourism. He has been invited as an expert of the Committee on Tourism of the German Bundestag on the topic “Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics – Opportunities for Tourism” and has been a member of the task force “Digitalization” of the National Platform for the Future of Tourism (NPZT) initiated by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. Wolfram Höpken has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Information Technology & Tourism.
Mirko Lalli founded The Data Appeal Company in 2014 within H-Farm. At the time, the idea of “big data in tourism” seemed like science fiction. Most industry operators were still making decisions based on intuition and outdated market research.
Lalli believed there was a better way. He built a platform powered by artificial intelligence, capable of analysing millions of online signals (reviews, social media, booking patterns, sentiment) and turning them into actionable intelligence for destinations and hospitality businesses.
Over the following decade, the company grew from startup to scale-up, raised several funding rounds, expanded internationally, and in 2023 acquired Mabrian Technologies, the Spanish leader in travel intelligence, creating a global player in tourism data. Along the way, Data Appeal pioneered the category of Destination Intelligence: the discipline of measuring and acting on everything the world says about places, properties, and experiences, across reviews, social conversations, and the broader digital footprint. The company continues to grow under new leadership. Lalli exited the CEO role in March 2026.
He is now Senior Advisor and Investor at rankwit.ai, focused on the travel vertical (rankwit.ai/travel), the first Generative Engine Optimization suite designed for hotels, hotel groups, and destinations.
The platforms he built at Data Appeal analyse over 5 million pieces of online content per minute and have mapped more than 251 million points of interest across over 180 countries. They serve 300 national tourism bodies in 51 countries: destination management organisations, global hotel chains, and financial institutions that need to understand traveller behaviour and destination performance.
He is an Independent Expert for the European Commission on data and artificial intelligence initiatives. He is a member of the World Travel & Tourism Council. He has completed executive education programmes at Harvard Business School and Singularity University. He hosts the Italian podcast Il Futuro del Turismo. He speaks at dozens of international conferences each year, from FITUR in Madrid to Phocuswright in Los Angeles, from WTM London to tourism summits around the world.
