Urban Planning and Tourism Consumption: 160 Years for the Ringstraße in Vienna (1857-2017)

From November 20-23rd, MODUL University, in conjunction with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Center for Austrian Studies at the Hebrew University, organized an international conference on ‘’Urban Planning and Tourism Consumption: 160 Years for the Ringstraße in Vienna (1857-2017)’’.

MODUL University President Karl Wöber opened the conference focused on city tourism, posing multiple questions to be addressed over the next three days. ‘’Consumers, who are highly mobile and better informed, became more demanding during their city breaks. However, how do consumers really behave in this globalizing, converging and consolidating tourism industry? How does the city tourists’ behavior differentiate them from other customers? How can we measure the value of city tourism planning and management?’’ he enquired.

The ensuing presentations by an international slate of participants from various academic backgrounds in tourism, geography, economics, sociology, marketing, and urban planning mostly made a link to Vienna and the conference theme. MU’s Dr. Ulrich Gunter of the Department of Tourism and Service Management presented his paper, "Destination Image – Web Sentiment – Projected Tourism Demand: A Mixed-Frequency Modeling and Forecasting Approach for Big Data," co-authored by Irem Önder of the same department and Arno Scharl, head of MU's Department of New Media Technology.

‘’Big data, or user-generated content such as geotagged photos, online search behavior, online ratings, and web sentiment, is becoming more and more important to find out what travelers are thinking about certain tourist attractions, and also to find out if that matches with what destination management organizations think tourists are interested in,’’ says Dr. Gunter. ‘’it helps to determine which tourist attractions tourists actually go to in terms of numbers, the time of the day, and in what sequence.’’

‘’MODUL University, and in particular its departments of Tourism and Service Management and of New Media Technology, is certainly at the forefront in terms of research at the intersection of city tourism and big data.’’

Austrian representation also included Norbert Kettner, CEO of the Vienna Tourism Board who gave a very well-received keynote speech on city marketing, and in particular the campaigning the Vienna Tourism Board did during the 150 years of Ringstrasse celebration and the current challenges caused by rapid tourism growth in urban destinations. Additionally, Dr. Danielle Spera, Head of the Jewish Museum in Vienna, H.E. Martin Weiss, Ambassador of the Republic of Austria to Israel, representatives of the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the ÖAD, the Austrian agency for international mobility and cooperation in education, science and research, were also present at the conference.

More information can be found on the European Forum homepage.