MU faculty presents at leading world tourism conference at the University of Surrey

From 19 – 22 July 2016, the University of Surrey hosted again its prestigious School of Hospitality and Tourism Management Conference, with two MU faculty members participating. The topic of this year’s conference was “Making an impact: creating constructive conversations”. This conference is widely considered one of the most relevant tourism and hospitality conferences in the world and typically takes place every five years. Acceptance of submitted abstracts and full papers is competitive.

This year, the conference gathered about 200 scholars, policy makers, and practitioners from all continents. The conference offered, among other features, five keynote speeches, eight regular workshops, two workshops for PhD students, 37 concurrent conference paper sessions organized in eight tracks on diverse topics ranging from destination marketing over knowledge management to big data. There were also plenty of opportunities for networking and socializing.

Prof. Dagmar Lund-Durlacher and Dr. Ulrich Gunter from MODUL University’s Department of Tourism and Service Management each presented a paper at this conference. Prof. Lund-Durlacher delivered a talk on the topic “Towards a conceptualization of sustainable food in the tourism context and implications for the travel industry” (co-authored by Hannes Antonschmidt and Klaus-Peter Fritz), whereas Dr. Gunter gave a presentation on “International ecotourism and adjusted economic convergence in Central America and the Caribbean” (co-authored by Graziano Ceddia, David Leonard, and Bernhard Tröster).

Including the talk by Prof. Alison Gill from Simon Fraser University, these presentations constituted a conference paper session on “Sustainability and ecological development”. These three talks were not only based on different specialist backgrounds (business, economics, and geography), but also used different research methods (mixed, quantitative, and qualitative), thus underlining the diversity and interdisciplinarity of tourism and hospitality research.

The conference also presented a great opportunity to refresh and strengthen the relations with international colleagues and Prof. Lund-Durlacher and Dr. Gunter had a number of talks about future research collaboration and further exchange cooperation with Universities around the world.

Photo: Ulrich Gunter, Dagmar Lund-Durlacher, and frequent collaborator Pierre Benckendorff of the University of Queensland