IFITT Awards were presented to the winners during ENTER2018 eTourism conference in Jönköping (Sweden).
Pictures from the ENTER2018 conference and awards ceremony will be available soon.
Each year, IFITT proudly awards innovative technology-savvy organizations working in the eTourism field, as well as outstanding research contributions.
In 2018 awards in nine different categories were presented during the gala dinner on Thursday, 25 January 2018.
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 2018 award is professor Andrew Frew, Queen Margaret University (UK).
IFITT Journal Paper of the Year Award
1. Vu, H. Q., Li, G., Law, R., & Zhang, Y. (2017). Travel Diaries Analysis by Sequential Rule Mining. Journal of Travel Research, 0047287517692446
2. Choe, Y., Kim, J.J., & Fesenmaier, D.R. (2017). Use of Social Media across the Trip Experience: An Application of Latent Transition Analysis. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 34(4), 431-443
3. Williams, N., Inversini; A., Buhalis, D., Ferdinand, N., 2017 Destination eWOM drivers and characteristics, Annals of Tourism Research Vol.64 pp.87–101
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, 2016 and September 30, 2017.
Category Master thesis: Edoardo Cantoni, Università della Svizzera italiana – USI (CH), for his thesis “Teenagers’ Perception of Canton Ticino through the Official Destination Website: an Eye Tracking Investigation”.
Category PhD thesis: Daniel Leung, MODUL University Vienna (Austria), for his thesis “Predicting usefulness of electronic word-of-mouth in the information-overload age: A mixed-method study”.
ENTER Conference Best Paper Award 2018
1. Wolfram Höpken, Tobias Eberle, Matthias Fuchs and Maria Lexhagen. “Search engine traffic as input for predicting tourist arrivals.”
2. Jason Stienmetz. “Deconstructing Visitor Experiences: Structure and Sentiment.”
3. Miriam Scaglione, Colin Johnson and Pascal Favre. “When last-minute really is last minute.”
JITT Article of the Year Award 2018
Neidhardt, J., Rümmele, N., & Werthner, H. (2017). Predicting happiness: user interactions and sentiment analysis in an online travel forum. Information Technology & Tourism, 17(1), 101-119.
IFITT Best PhD Proposal Award 2018
1. Francisco Femenia-Serra, University of Alicante (Spain). “Smart Tourism Destinations: A Demand-Based Approach for Improving Local Tourism Management .”
2. Hyerhim Kim, University of Surrey (UK). “The effectiveness of online Cause-Related Marketing message framing on hotel brand evaluation.”
3. Mattia Rainoldi, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences (Austria). “Work and leisure in the digital age: A border exploration.”
IFITT Best Poster Award 2018
Y. Choe, Y. Lee, H. Kim, L. Pennington-Gray. “Representation of Food Safety in Online Reviews”
IFITT ICT4D Scholarship
Obot Ibanga, University of Uyo (Nigeria)
Frederick Dayour, University of Surrey (UK)
Best IFITTtalks of the year
1. IFITTtalk@Adelaide (Australia) – Longevity workshop on August 30 and November 21, 2017, Adelaide, Australia: “Digital Marketing in Tourism │ Smart Services in Tourism and Smart Destinations” organized by Centre for Tourism & Leisure Management (CTLM), University of South Australia (UniSA).
2. IFITTtalk@Nairobi (Kenya) – “Enhancing the competitiveness of Africa’s tourism: the ICTs pathway” organized by Nyabisi Mengo (Kenyatta University).