MU á Lyon - Our researchers at the European Cities Marketing Annual Conference

Dr. Irem Arsal and Clemens Költringer from MODUL University Vienna participated in this year's European Cities Marketing (ECM) annual conference held from June 8th to 11th in Lyon, France. ECM provides a platform on a pan-European basis for cities to perform better in their convention and tourism activities through the exchange of knowledge and best practice within a city marketing framework.

This year’s topic was "To what extent can cuisine be a competitive advantage and successfully drive forward a city’s marketing?”. The presentations and discussions during the conference tried to answer this question by investigating the promotion of gourmet cuisine through exhibitions and tradeshows as well as the impact of Web 2.0 on travel guide activity.

ECM and MU Vienna have a well-established cooperation, based on over 13 years of involvement by MU president Karl Wöber in the organization and numerous faculty members collaborating on ECM-related projects. In particular, our tourism and hospitality faculty provides technical advice for research projects undertaken by ECM. We are especially proud to announce the launch of the second version of the joint European Cities Online Benchmarking Tool project.

In addition, Dr. Arsal and Katrin Heintschel from Vienna Tourist Board presented key results from this year’s ECM Benchmarking report, produced by MODUL University Vienna in cooperation with ECM Benchmark group. The report includes the latest figures about the performance of European Cities in 2010 and illustrates the main trends in city tourism between 2005 and 2010 from 110 European cities.