User
Short Bio
Karl Wöber, born 1964 in Vienna, Austria, is Full Professor and Founding President of MODUL University Vienna. He is the elected chairman of the Austrian Private University Conference. At MU Vienna he is also the Dean of the Professional School which includes the MBA degree and the seminar (certificate) program. Karl acquired his PhD from the Vienna University of Economics and Business where he became Associate Professor and Deputy Department Head at the Institute for Tourism and Leisure Studies in 2000. In 1997, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Leisure Studies. Since 2005, he is a Visiting Senior Fellow of the School of Management at the University of Surrey (UK), and a Senior Fellow of the National Laboratory of Tourism and eCommerce at the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Temple University (Philadelphia, USA). His main research activities are in the fields of computer support in tourism and hospitality marketing, decision support systems, multivariate methods and strategic planning. Karl Wöber is also Technical Advisor to European Cities Marketing and the European Travel Commission for many years.
Research Interests
Over the last 20 years Karl’s interdisciplinary research focused on computer support in tourism and hospitality marketing and management, decision support systems, and economics. His main research contributions are in the fields of decision support systems, and strategic marketing and strategic planning. The principle questions underlying most of his research activities are how to improve the decision making of managers and consumers by providing decision support tools. Within the general field of decision support system research, he particularly investigated various forms of collaborative decision making methods and methods for solving multi-criteria decision making problems. This research led to the development of the most comprehensive tourism marketing and management information system (www.tourmis.info) which is currently in use by more than 18,000 registered users in Europe and draws upon his expertise in tourism statistics, benchmarking, forecasting, marketing, and strategic planning. As a research group coordinator of an EU funded project for developing an intelligent recommendation system for tourist decision making he invented the concept of collaborative browsing as an alternative artificial intelligence technique to collaborative filtering. The recommendation cycle of this procedure was later applied by the Italian spin-off company Trip@dvice, who used the more intuitive name seeking for inspiration for this methodology. In some other work on destination recommendation systems he investigated the role of search engines in finding tourism information. In particular, he got fascinated by the idea that domain-specific search engines may better support the information search process of travelers than generic search engines and that combining content and usage mining techniques for unobtrusively observing and analyzing travelers’ information will lead to better recommendations of tourism related websites. His work on domain-specific search engines materialized in a number of real-time applications, most prominently the web portal of European Cities Marketing.
Awards
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2011 : elected as Fellow of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism (International Academy for the Study of Tourism)
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2010 : Johann Strauss Gold Medal (Vienna Tourist Board)
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2009 : Ulysses Award for Innovation in Tourism Enterprises (World Tourism Organization)
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2008 : Charles R. Goeldner Article of Excellence Award (Journal of Travel Research)
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2004 : Martin Oppermann Memorial Award (Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing)
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2000 : Senator Wilhelm-Wilfling-Award (Senator Wilhelm Wilfling Stiftung)
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1994 : Research Award (Austrian Society of Applied Research in Tourism)
Projects
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City Tourism Performance Monitors – Methodology of Data Collection in Cities
Development of an instrument for collecting information about systems measuring city tourism performance worldwide. Data form and questionnaire for the expert interviews with destination management organizations (DMOs) that were developed include the most current, measurable, objective, and replicable information.
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, Department of Tourism and Service Management
Author: Bozana Zekan, Irem Önder, Karl Wöber
Date: 01.03.2016 - 31.08.2016
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
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European Cities Tourism Report
Comprehensive overview of the European city tourism trends and competitiveness (including the benchmarking case study of 27 cities by applying data envelopment analysis), European air transport, as well as the case studies on low-cost airline services, smart tourism in smart cities, and the sharing economy.
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, Department of Tourism and Service Management
Author: Bozana Zekan, Karl Wöber
Date: 01.03.2016 - 31.08.2016
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
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TourMIS
Development of a Tourism Marketing Information System. Objective: Developing and testing interactive tools which support tourism related management tasks.
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, Department of Tourism and Service Management, Graduate Programs
Author: Karl Wöber, Irem Önder
Date: 01.09.1990 -
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
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SCITHOS Smart City Hospitality
Urban tourism contributes to (local) economic prosperity, but also creates negative consequences such as CO2 emissions and pollution, overcrowding, traffic jams, noise and touristification of the city, thereby harming liveability for both residents and tourists. This project introduces the Smart City Hospitality concept, consisting of guidelines and tools, that can support cities to make the transition towards environmentally and socially responsible tourism that simultaneously contributes to long-term (economic) prosperity. Through combining hospitality principles, simulation tools, apps and serious gaming techniques, this concept supports policymakers in generating deep reflections about barriers to sustainable urban tourism and the need for transition or adaptation strategies. This project develops Smart City Hospitality guidelines and tools for cities that could help them find solutions to overcrowding, pollution, noise and numerous other problems that are caused by tourism and actively involve the public in doing so.
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, Department of Tourism and Service Management, Graduate Programs
Author: Irem Önder, Karl Wöber, Lidija Lalicic
Date: 01.05.2016 - 01.05.2019
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
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ECM Benchmarking Report
Tourism organizations need internationally comparable statistical data on the present structure of the industry as well as on historical and future trends. Based on reliable information, strategies and operational plans are implemented, monitored and where necessary, modified in response to feedback from the market. ECM Benchmarking Report covers the information needs of city tourism managers and is based on the data collected by TourMIS. It has a distinct focus on the strategic and competitive position of European city destinations and thus equips destination managers with important trends and recent developments in the European city tourism business. The prime objective of the ECM Report is to convert complex statistical data to easily accessible and comprehensive managerial information mainly by graphical presentation of charts.
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, Department of Tourism and Service Management
Author: Irem Önder, Karl Wöber
Date: 01.02.2009 -
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
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Benchmarking Webanalytics of European Destinations
Modern day tourism organizations use standard general-purpose software tools, such as Google Analytics to collect and report website statistics. But to the standardized key performance indicators (KPIs) provided by these tools really provide added value? What insights do they provide? How can they be applied in an effective way? It is of outmost importance to find KPIs that are linked to the objectives of every tourism organization. General-purpose tools are good in improving an individual’s website content or for identifying and solving usability issues. However, they are not capable of providing meaningful, industry specific information. Moreover, web analytics need to move from a technology driven, standardized reporting function towards a business objective centered approach, which provides useful information to managers. The purpose of this project is to create a unique platform for destinations, to compare and benchmark their website with other destination websites. In addition, it gives the opportunity to create online marketing projects based on the demographics of their website visitors, compare the number of visitors from source market versus number of website visitors from the same source market, and opportunities for forecasting.
Organisations: MODUL University Vienna, Department of Tourism and Service Management
Author: Karl Wöber, Irem Önder
Date: 01.10.2015 -
Managed By: MODUL University Vienna
Research Output
- 2017
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"Towards a Sustainable Urban Tourism Development in Europe - The Role of Benchmarking and Tourism Management Information Systems - A Partial Model of Destination Competitiveness"2017 in: Tourism Economics. Volume: 23. Issue number: 2 Pages: 243-259
The development of indicators and metrics systems has been identified as being of paramount importance by many tourism boards and international tourism organizations. This article discusses the bottom-up, micro-level approach of TourMIS, which is a platform for exchanging tourism statistics among tourism organizations, for collecting measures of sustainable urban tourism development. The authors provide a synthesis of various frameworks for sustainable tourism indicators for subnational regions and cities, concluding that it is more feasible to analyse existing sustainable tourism indicators than to introduce new measures lacking in direct practical applicability for the organizations. The application of data envelopment analysis (DEA) for benchmarking urban tourism destinations is then demonstrated by assessing measures available in TourMIS. Findings include inefficiency scores that suggest both managerial and political implications. Furthermore, the concept of a virtual reference destination assisting managers and politicians to analyse their destination’s strengths and weaknesses is introduced.
Author(s): Irem Önder, Karl Wöber, Bozana Zekan
Publication date: 3. 2017
Volume: 23
Issue number: 2
Pages: 243-259
Electronic version(s), related files and links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1354816616656247
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"The European Cities Marketing Benchmarking Report: 13th official edition"2017
Author(s): Karl Wöber, Irem Önder, Bozana Zekan
Publication date: 2017
Publisher: ECM
- 2016
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"Benchmarking Website Statistics"2016 in: Tourismus Wissen Quarterly. Volume: January 2016. Pages: 67-70
Author(s): Irem Önder, Karl Wöber
Publication date: 2016
Volume: January 2016
Pages: 67-70
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"The European Cities Marketing Benchmarking Report: 12th official edition"2016
Author(s): Karl Wöber, Irem Önder
Publication date: 2016
Publisher: European Cities Marketing
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"European Cities Tourism Report"2016
Author(s): Bozana Zekan, Karl Wöber
Publication date: 2016
Publisher: World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF)
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