IFITT Awards were presented to the winners during ENTER2017 eTourism conference in Rome (Italy).
See here pictures from the ENTER2017 conference and awards ceremony.
Each year, IFITT proudly awards innovative technology-savvy organizations working in the eTourism field, as well as outstanding research contributions.
In 2017 awards in nine different categories were presented during the gala dinner on Tuesday, 24 January 2016.
IFITT Outstanding Industry Contribution Award (startup enterprises)
The Award is given to enterprises that make a significant contribution to the growth and success of technology adoption, integration, or use in the tourism industry.
The winners of the award in 2017 are:
1. eRoom
2. Hoxell
3. BookEasy
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 winner of 2017 award is professor Rodolfo Baggio, Bocconi University (Italy).
IFITT Journal Paper of the Year Award
1. Van der Rest, J.I., Cordella, P., Loosschilder, G., & Schwartz, Z. (2016). Connecting Search Marketing to Revenue Management: conjoint analysis as a methodology to evaluate the optimal OTA commission fee. Service Science, 8(2), 1-15. doi: 10.1287/serv.2016.0137.
2. Kärle, E., & Fensel, A. (2016). Multi-platform mobile service creation: increasing brand touch-points for hotels. Journal of Mobile Multimedia, 12(1&2), pp. 091-109.
3. Fang, B., Ye, Q., Kucukusta, D., & Law, R. (2016). Analysis of the perceived value of online tourism reviews: influence of readability and reviewer characteristics. Tourism Management, 52, 498-506.
IFITT Thesis Excellence Award
The Thesis Excellence Award awards students who successfully defended their theses in the field of tourism and technology between October 1, 2015 and September 30, 2016.
Category Master thesis: Ioanna Samakovlis, Bournemouth University (UK), for her thesis “Making the Reality of the Marginalised Visible – How tourism development interventions can utilise social media”.
Category PhD thesis: Jing Ge, University of Queensland (Australia), for her thesis “The Use of Humour for Customer Engagement on Chinese Social Media – A Rhetorical Perspective”.
ENTER Conference Best Paper Award 2017
1. Zheng Xiang, Qianzhou Du, Yufeng Ma and Weiguo Fan. “Assessing Reliability of Social Media Data: Lessons from Mining TripAdvisor Hotel Reviews.”
2. Baggio Rodolfo and Miriam Scaglione. “Strategic Visitor Flows (SVF) analysis using mobile data.”
3. Sangwon Park and Jason Chen. “Spill-over Effects of Online Consumer Reviews in the Hotel Industry.”
IFITT Best PhD Proposal Award 2017
1. Miha Bratec, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia). “Exploring Daily Deals as a distribution channel and potential driver of hotel performance: Evidence from Central Europe.”
2. Jingjing Lin, Università della Svizzera italiana (Switzerland). “Innovation-Decision Process of Hospitality and Tourism MOOCs: Conversations with Instructors.”
3. Zohreh Zara Zarezadeh, Unversity of Queensland (Australia). “Revisiting Travel Information Search Strategy.”
IFITT ICT4D Scholarship
Daniel Beyene, Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia)
Mariana Brandao, Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration (EBAPE) (Brazil)
Best IFITTtalks of the year
1. IFITTtalk@Adelaide (Australia) – “Big data & Customer Engagement in Tourism” organized by Prof Marianna Sigala (Centre for Tourism and Leisure Management, School of Management, University of South Australia).
2. IFITTtalk@SantaCatarina (Brazil) – “Seminar in Technology Innovation on Tourism” organized by Dr. Alexandre Biz, Director of TURITEC Lab (Federal University of Paraná), and Dr. Luiz Mendes-Filho (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte).