DistURBANce in Travel at the European Cities Marketing International Conference

Karl Wöber, Irem Önder, Bozana Zekan and Lidija Lalicic from the Department of Tourism and Service Management attended the European Cities Marketing International Conference under the theme ‘’DistURBANce in Travel’’ in Dubrovnik, Croatia from May 31^st to the 3^rd of June.

At the conference, European city managers and researchers met to discuss and hear about future Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), the possibilities of collaborative economies and technological developments in tourism.

The discussion led to the agreement that urban tourism is growing and classical DMOs have to expand their role to become Destination Development Management and Marketing Organisations (DDMMOs) to tackle future challenges with a holistic approach. 

Our faculty presented their latest research at the international conference: Dr. Önder and Dr. Lalicic shared the first results from the yearly benchmark report and meetings statistics report, and Dr. Önder and Dr. Zekan to reveal the results of their study related to Airbnb and determinant factors for Airbnb demand in Vienna. Dr. Zekan was also invited to present in the Research & Statistics group on one of her doctoral studies concerning DMOs' use of key performance indicators, which is a topic of continuous interest to the ECM members.

Lastly, Dr. Önder also presented a case study related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), which demonstrated the content selection by AI for Facebook pages of tourism organizations.

Reflecting on the experience, she said “It was a nice conference as always and it’s important to have industry and academia together at one event since we have a lot to learn from each other”.

Photo L-R: Bozana Zekan, Irem Önder, and Lidija Lalicic