Tourism and Service Management faculty win Wirtschaftskammerpreis and attends IATE 2017

Dr. Bozana Zekan, Dr. Irem Önder, and Dr. Ulrich Gunter of the Department of Tourism and Service Management are the recipients of the Wirtschaftskammerpreis 2017 in the amount of €7500. The prize, which recognises outstanding research proposals, was awarded for their project proposal titled “Sharing Economy: The Competitive Standing of Viennese Airbnb Accommodations”, which nicely portrays their common research interests and complementary methodological skills.

The ‘Sharing economy’ is a key buzzword these days, and the three have recognized the need to delve into this topic by looking into the key determinants of Airbnb demand in Vienna and quantifying their contributions in terms of demand elasticities. Moreover, another level of analysis looks at the competitive standing of Vienna in terms of the Airbnb offers.

“The reality is that not all cities are equally successful when it comes to adapting the sharing economy, so this is a clear call for the competitiveness/efficiency analysis, which is really an exciting area of research - for me in particular” says Dr. Zekan.

Preliminary results of their research were also presented at the 6thConference of the International Association for Tourism Economics (IATE), which was hosted by the University of Bologna, Rimini Campus, and took place from June 20th until June 23rd. The conference was attended by around 150 researchers from Australia, China, the US, and from all over Europe, all of whom are passionate about tourism economics.

Dr. Zekan, Dr. Öneder and Dr. Gunter were joined by Dr. Egon Smeral and thus contributed four submissions in total to the scientific program, demonstrating the strength of our faculty within this research domain.

“All of our presentations were very well received. We are looking forward to continuing our work as we can surely derive a lot of managerial implications for the hospitality industry in Vienna, along with giving the city a chance to become even more competitive in terms of its Airbnb offer compared to its European competitors,” said the research team.

Congratulations on this great achievement!