UNWTO awarded MODUL University Vienna and the Austrian National Tourist Office with Ulysses Prize

Mr. Fritz (ÖW), Prof. Wöber (MU)Madrid (May 27, 2009). The tourism marketing information system TourMIS (www.tourmis.info) has been awarded this year’s Jury Prize for Innovation in Tourism Enterprises by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Ulysses Committee. The award ceremony took place during the international Ulysses Conference 2009 in Madrid, where Professor Karl Wöber, MODUL University Vienna, and Mr. Werner Fritz, Austrian National Tourist Office, received the prize.

Professor Karl Wöber explains the original idea and the development of this project: “In 1990, when I started working as a PhD student and junior researcher at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, I realized that the big problem with academic research in general and management science models in particular is that tourism managers practically never used it. With the support of the Austrian National Tourist Office, we investigated the main reasons for this problem and started developing this Wikipedia-type of marketing information system with the objective of integrating the tourism manager in the development of the system. Today, TourMIS has more than 15,000 online users and answers more than 150,000 questions on tourism statistics per year. After almost twenty years of work, I am very proud that this project is recognized by this very prestigious industry award.”

The success of TourMIS is a result of the hard work of a great number of people. The main credits go to the Austrian National Tourist Office, which has recognized the information needs of the tourism industry and provided financial support during the entire project period. TourMIS is also supported by the European Travel Commission and European Cities Marketing and their members who, by regularly updating their statistics, make international and timely comparisons of tourism statistics possible.

Further information:
TourMIS (http://www.tourmis.info)
TourMIS white paper (http://www.tourmis.info/material/tourmis_wp_TXE.pdf)
Forthcoming TourMIS Workshop (http://www.modul.ac.at/tourmis)