MODUL University Vienna Initiated a Special Interest Group on e-Tourism at this Year's Summer AMA Conference

How destination information is used, searched for and represented in electronic networks is the focus of a special session initiated by Astrid Dickinger and Karl Wöber at the American Marketing Association’s Summer Educators Conference.

The Internet has become the predominant information source for travelers, an important communication channel for destinations to present themselves, and an essential platform to execute transactions. In tourism, due to the intangibility of the service provided and highly complex product bundles (flight, hotel, rental car, additional services), customers do not have the opportunity to investigate the product prior to purchase. Therefore, they have to rely on the information they receive about holiday destinations to minimize the risk involved with the purchase decision. The amount of available online content increases with the diffusion of easy to use applications for user generated content. This adds to the complexity of the information landscape and makes it harder to identify relevant, credible, informative and trustworthy information. These developments lead to several streams of research emerging in the e-tourism domain, and at the same time constitute challenges for travelers and destinations: (i) understanding of the persuasiveness of web sites and relationships of use; (ii) finding the right information and being found as a destination through search engines; (iii) making sense of the abundance of content available and learning how a destination is represented online through text mining; iv) understanding how travelers evaluate information, particularly content generated by other users. These challenges are covered in the talks of this special session by tourism academics such as Zheng Xiang (University of North Texas), Ulrike Gretzel (Texas A&M University) and Daniel Fesenmaier (Temple University). The latter two are also external lecturers at MODUL University’s Master programs.

Contact

Dr. Astrid Dickinger, MODUL University Vienna
Department of New Media Technology & Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Am Kahlenberg 1, 1190 Vienna, Austria
Astrid.dickinger@modul.ac.at | www.modul.ac.at