MU at ECM autumn meeting in Biarritz, France

MODUL University Vienna is a longtime partner of European Cities Marketing (ECM), with a number of our tourism and hospitality faculty engaged in activities such as providing technical advice for research projects undertaken by ECM.

Prof. Dr. Karl Wöber and Dr. Irem Önder attended the autumn meeting of European Cities Marketing (ECM), which was held in Biarritz, France from November 14th to 17th, 2012.

The focus of the meeting was “Integrated Marketing: Everyone in the city sells the city”.

The first day was filled with interactive knowledge exchange through meetings of the ongoing sub-groups under the ECM umbrella.

Dr. Önder and Dr. Wöber are members of the Research and Statistics Knowledge group which also includes representatives from various European city organizations. The main goal of this group is to support research projects which help city tourism organizations, and this meeting in particular touched on the use of online vs. offline survey to collect visitor data in the cities, and the advantages and disadvantages of using both versions including how the members conduct their visitor surveys.

In addition, Dr. Önder and Dr. Wöber are responsible for the data collection, forecasting the missing data and writing of the annual ECM Benchmarking Report. They will be working with former Modulian and current at the Vienna Tourism Board, Dr. Clemens Költringer, who is also the new chair of the ECM Benchmarking report.

On the main conference day, all the groups reconvened to discuss topics pertinent to European Tourism at many levels - the impact of the London Olympics on the city; integrated city marketing in smaller cities; the case of Uppsala, film-induced tourism and the impact of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy on Swedish tourism; and the social impact of hosting meetings in a city were the day’s highlights. The last day, topics included examples of best practices from different European cities such as the impact of events on cities; mobile information use by visitors and tourist information offices; and interpreting visitor statistics and how to get the most out of the visitor data.

For more information about ECM: www.europeancitiesmarketing.com