Ulrich Gunter
Short Bio
Ulrich Gunter is an Associate Professor (tenured) at the Department of Tourism and Service Management of MODUL University Vienna and Dean of the Graduate Degree Programs, thereby being responsible for the university's MBA and MSc programs. He holds a Diplom "with Honors" (roughly equivalent to MSc) in Economics from the University of Regensburg (2007, study program within the Elite Network of Bavaria; visiting undergraduate student at Santa Clara University in 2006), a PhD in Economics from the University of Vienna (2010, full scholarship from the University of Vienna as "Kollegassistent" for the structured PhD program Issues in the Global Economy: Dynamics, Governance, and Information), as well as an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Vienna (2015). Following a habilitation process, Ulrich obtained his Venia Docendi (university teaching license) from MODUL University Vienna in 2017.
Ulrich was a visiting researcher at the University of Surrey (November 2013), the University of Sao Paulo (July to September 2014; conclusion of a Brazilian Pós-Doutorado), and the University of Florida (September to October 2017). Besides being one of the two founding co-editors of the MODUL University Working Paper Series, he is a member of the editorial boards of the scholarly journals Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights, Forecasting, Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Analysis, and Tourism Economics. Ulrich is Vice Chair of the Tourism and Hospitality Section (THS) of the International Institute of Forecasters (IIF) and a member of the Computational and Financial Econometrics Network (CFE) and the International Association for Tourism Economics (IATE). At MODUL University Vienna, he is a member of the University Senate. In the past, Ulrich also acted as the chair of the university's Merit Scholarship Committee and as the liaison officer for outgoing exchange students to the School of Tourism & Hospitality Management Sant Ignasi, the University of Florida, and the University of Surrey.
Research Interests
Ulrich's research interest is in applied econometrics, with a particular focus on time-series analysis (including forecasting) and panel-data analysis. His current primary fields of thematic interest are the economics of tourism and of sustainability, while his earlier research focused on macroeconomics, monetary policy, and financial stability. Ulrich's research has been published in leading international scholarly journals and has received external funding from various bodies, such as the European Commission, the Hochschuljubiläumsstiftung der Stadt Wien, or the Vienna Economic Chamber.
Awards
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2022 : Award for outstanding contributions to the Editorial Board of Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights in 2021 (Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights)
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2018 : Commendation for Emerging Scholarship in Tourism 2019 (International Academy for the Study of Tourism)
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2017 : Wirtschaftskammerpreis 2017 (Wirtschaftskammer Wien)
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2014 : Wirtschaftskammerpreis 2014 (Wirtschaftskammer Wien)
Projects
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Schätzung der CO2-Emissionen des europäischen Städtetourismus - Wien im internationalen Vergleich
This project seeks to assess the travel-induced CO2 emissions of Vienna more accurately. In doing so, a novel measure of travel-induced CO2 emissions originating from total tourist arrivals to the city is employed. The novelties of this measure relate to the inclusion of Vienna's source-market-specific characteristics such as travel distance between source market and destination, modal split, and average number of European city destinations visited per trip. This new measure also allows for changes in the city's guest mix structure as well as source-market specific lengths of stay over time. In a second step, the estimated travel-induced CO2 emissions of Vienna are benchmarked against its major European competitors.
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, School of Tourism and Service Management
Author: Ulrich Gunter, Karl Wöber
Date: 01.01.2020 - 31.12.2020
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
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Carrying Capacity Methodology for Tourism
The overall goal of the service contract is to determine the carrying capacity in regions dominated by tourism. This will help local leaders in destinations to analyse and assess the impact of tourism in their regions based on indicators for the economic, social and environmental aspects affected. The focus will lie on big data, new technologies, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. This needs to be conditioned for European tourist destinations. In the context of this service contract local, national and EU policies will be advised in managing and measuring carrying capacity in tourist destinations.
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, School of Sustainability, Governance, and Methods, Department of Public Governance and Sustainable Development, School of Tourism and Service Management, Research Center of New Media Technology
Author: Sabine Sedlacek, Christian Weismayer, Bozana Zekan, Ulrich Gunter, Daniel Dan, Lyndon Nixon
Date: 11.11.2019 - 11.11.2020
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
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Qualifikationsnetzwerk "Smart Data Analytics für die Hotellerie"
The purpose of the qualification network is to teach employees of tourism businesses - especially accommodation providers - the use of data and advanced methods of analysis. Data management and analysis is considered a central element of digitalization in tourism and the added value of an efficient and effective data processing is given in the companies. The aim is to teach the state of research in a way that enables businesses to explore new sources of data and to link these sources to generate better information for decision-making. With this knowledge, businesses should be better able to accompany and to consult the guest during the whole "customer-journey". For this purpose, the scientific partners MODUL University Vienna and Technical University Vienna combine their expertise in the area of data management and tourism.
Organisations: School of Tourism and Service Management, MODUL University Vienna, Research Center of New Media Technology
Author: Hannes Antonschmidt, Astrid Dickinger, Ulrich Gunter, Lyndon Nixon, Daniel Dan, Arno Scharl
Date: 01.07.2019 - 31.12.2020
Managed By: School of Tourism and Service Management
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Well-known public places and 'hidden gems' in Vienna – Estimating and forecasting visitor numbers with geotagged photos
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, School of Tourism and Service Management
Author: Ulrich Gunter, Irem Önder
Date: 01.12.2017 - 30.11.2018
Managed By: School of Tourism and Service Management
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Sharing Economy: The Competitive Standing of Viennese Airbnb Accommodations
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, School of Tourism and Service Management
Author: Bozana Zekan, Irem Önder, Ulrich Gunter
Date: 01.10.2017 - 30.09.2018
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
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Status Quo of Airbnb in Vienna and in its Main Competitors
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, School of Tourism and Service Management
Author: Ulrich Gunter, Irem Önder, Bozana Zekan
Date: 01.08.2016 - 31.01.2017
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
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The Tourism Research, Innovation and Next Generation Learning Experience
The Tourism Research, Innovation And Next Generation Learning Experience (TRIANGLE) Program is creating a Knowledge Alliance of HEIs and businesses across Europe, delivering a common sustainable tourism training system for protected area and green tourism destinations. Within the framework of the EU’s Erasmus Knowledge Alliance program, the European-wide Ecotrans Network for Sustainable Tourism has teamed up with leading universities (Algarve, Eberswalde, Sorbonne, Vienna), and businesses with core ICT and tourism interests (Eau de Web, Forum Anders Reisen) to create a European-wide collaborative online learning system for Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) to offer quality sustainability training and education to tourism destination administrators, SMEs workforce individuals and students linked to tourism activity in Europe’s protected areas and green destinations.
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, School of Tourism and Service Management
Author: Ulrich Gunter, Dagmar Lund-Durlacher
Date: 01.11.2016 - 31.10.2019
Managed By: School of Tourism and Service Management
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Statistical Report on Tourism Accommodation Establishments
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, School of Tourism and Service Management
Author: Egon Smeral, Irem Önder, Ulrich Gunter
Date: 01.01.2016 - 31.12.2017
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
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Forecasting Tourism Demand for Vienna with Google Trends
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether using Google Trends indices for web and image searches improves tourism demand forecast accuracy relative to a purely autoregressive baseline model. To this end, Vienna, one of the top-10 European city destinations, is chosen as a case example, for which the predictive power of Google Trends is evaluated at the total demand and at the source market levels. The effect of the search query language on predictability of arrivals is considered and differences between seasonal and seasonally-adjusted data are investigated. The results confirm that the forecast accuracy is improved when Google Trends data are included across source markets and forecast horizons for seasonal and seasonally-adjusted data, leaning towards native-language searches. This outperformance not only holds relative to purely autoregressive baseline specifications, but also relative to time-series models such as Holt-Winters and naïve benchmarks, where the latter are significantly outperformed on a regular basis.
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, School of Tourism and Service Management
Author: Ulrich Gunter, Irem Önder
Date: 01.10.2014 - 30.06.2015
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
Research Output
- 2022
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"Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)"2022
Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a non-parametric, deterministic method for evaluating performance. DEA estimates best practice production frontiers and measures the relative efficiency of peer entities. These entities are called decision-making units (DMUs) and are assumed to be homogeneous. This assumption implies that all DMUs (e.g., hotels, Airbnb listings, destinations) pursue the same or at least similar goals (e.g., increasing occupancy rate, increasing guest satisfaction). Then, their performances are evaluated. DEA has been successfully used in various contexts, with continuous applications across disciplines and sectors as diverse as agriculture, Airbnb listings, banking, education, hospitals, hotels, transportation and travel agencies. The literature also highlights the method’s superior benchmarking abilities over other operations research techniques. This characteristic alone makes DEA interesting to decision makers. It gives them an opportunity to improve the performance of their DMUs. Benchmarking is all about improvement.
Author(s): Bozana Zekan, Ulrich Gunter
Publication date: 7. 2022
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd
Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781800377486
Host publication editor(s): D. Buhalis
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"Regional sustainability and tourism carrying capacities"2022 in: Journal of Cleaner Production. Volume: 339.
Discussion on the growth limits and carrying capacity of tourism destinations is not new. Already for decades, carrying capacity has been at the core of sustainable tourism development and aims at offering ‘time/space-specific answers’ for individual localities of various European regions. There are many definitions of this concept and the calculation of a single ‘magic number’ quantifying the carrying capacity is infeasible for reasons such as differences in the thresholds established by visitors and residents, ecological limits, various resources, etc. The discussion about carrying capacity in the context of regional sustainability is linked to human activities impacting a region. This impact has to be within the region's ecological limits and consistent with the region's social and economic constraints in order to ensure adequate supporting functions for the population living in the region. This means that regions should learn as much as possible about the impact of tourism on their destinations in order to develop solid and adequate policies for regional and tourism development. This paper therefore introduces a novel methodology for assessing carrying capacity in tourism destinations, which (a) is specific enough to cater to destination-specific needs, as verified by pilot-testing on various representative case studies, and (b) is general enough to be applicable to any tourism destination throughout European regions. The results emphasize the importance of such a hands-on actionable methodology, while at the same time underlining the importance of dialogue between different stakeholder groups. The value added of the developed methodology is that it simultaneously addresses regional sustainability and tourism development, while acknowledging the fact that there is no single metric or value for carrying capacity. Finally, it is applicable to various types of destinations.
Author(s): Bozana Zekan, Christian Weismayer, Ulrich Gunter, Bernd Schuh, Sabine Sedlacek
Publication date: 10. 3. 2022
Volume: 339
Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.130624
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"Forecasting: theory and practice"2022 in: International Journal of Forecasting.
Forecasting has always been at the forefront of decision making and planning. The uncertainty that surrounds the future is both exciting and challenging, with individuals and organisations seeking to minimise risks and maximise utilities. The large number of forecasting applications calls for a diverse set of forecasting methods to tackle real-life challenges. This article provides a non-systematic review of the theory and the practice of forecasting. We provide an overview of a wide range of theoretical, state-of-the-art models, methods, principles, and approaches to prepare, produce, organise, and evaluate forecasts. We then demonstrate how such theoretical concepts are applied in a variety of real-life contexts. We do not claim that this review is an exhaustive list of methods and applications. However, we wish that our encyclopedic presentation will offer a point of reference for the rich work that has been undertaken over the last decades, with some key insights for the future of forecasting theory and practice. Given its encyclopedic nature, the intended mode of reading is non-linear. We offer cross-references to allow the readers to navigate through the various topics. We complement the theoretical concepts and applications covered by large lists of free or open-source software implementations and publicly-available databases.
Author(s): Fotios Petropoulos, Daniele Apiletti, Vassilios Assimakopoulos, ... ..., Ulrich Gunter, ... ...
Publication date: 20. 1. 2022
Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2021.11.001
- 2021
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"Improving Hotel Room Demand Forecasts for Vienna across Hotel Classes and Forecast Horizons: Single Models and Combination Techniques Based on Encompassing Tests"2021 in: Forecasting. Volume: 3. Issue number: 4 Pages: 884-919
The present study employs daily data made available by the STR SHARE Center covering the period from 1 January 2010 to 31 January 2020 for six Viennese hotel classes and their total. The forecast variable of interest is hotel room demand. As forecast models, (1) Seasonal Naïve, (2) Error Trend Seasonal (ETS), (3) Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA), (4) Trigonometric Seasonality, Box–Cox Transformation, ARMA Errors, Trend and Seasonal Components (TBATS), (5) Seasonal Neural Network Autoregression (Seasonal NNAR), and (6) Seasonal NNAR with an external regressor (seasonal naïve forecast of the inflation-adjusted ADR) are employed. Forecast evaluation is carried out for forecast horizons h = 1, 7, 30, and 90 days ahead based on rolling windows. After conducting forecast encompassing tests, (a) mean, (b) median, (c) regression-based weights, (d) Bates–Granger weights, and (e) Bates–Granger ranks are used as forecast combination techniques. In the relative majority of cases (i.e., in 13 of 28), combined forecasts based on Bates–Granger weights and on Bates–Granger ranks provide the highest level of forecast accuracy in terms of typical measures. Finally, the employed methodology represents a fully replicable toolkit for practitioners in terms of both forecast models and forecast combination techniques.
Author(s): Ulrich Gunter
Publication date: 27. 11. 2021
Volume: 3
Issue number: 4
Pages: 884-919
Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/doi.org/10.3390/forecast3040054
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"Zooming into Airbnb listings of European cities: Further investigation of the sector’s competitiveness"2021 in: Tourism Economics.
Airbnb has a major role to play in the competitiveness of the overall accommodation sector of individual destinations and it is rather unlikely that this role will diminish in the post-COVID-19 recovery of the tourism industry. Therefore, the present study motivates the Airbnb sector to look back at its past performance for insights that can be used in setting post-pandemic targets. In particular, this research assesses competitiveness of the Airbnb listings of 28 European cities by including hotel-related data as uncontrollable input variables within interactive data envelopment analysis modeling. The contribution lies in joining Airbnb listings and hotels into the benchmarking discussion and efficiency analysis, along with looking beyond the cumulative number of listings by dissecting the overall sector into commercial and private listings—something that has not been attempted as of yet, in spite of the ever-growing body of literature on the sharing economy.
Author(s): Bozana Zekan, Ulrich Gunter
Publication date: 7. 10. 2021
Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/13548166211044889
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