At the International Conference on Tourism – ICOT 2013, special session on “Pilgrimage and Pilgrims: Journeys, Destinations, Meanings”, held in Limassol, Cyprus, 5-8 June 2013, prof. Lorenzo Cantoni presented a study co-authored by dr. Silvia De Ascaniis, about “Artistic and Religious Experiences in Online Travel Reviews about Saint Paul Outside the Walls (Rome)“. Below the abstract.

The online environment is an increasingly important source of information for travellers, who may consult both official tourism businesses and fellow tourists. Online platforms as TripAdvisor allow tourists, in fact, to share their experiences and voice their opinions in an electronic-Word-of-Mouth kind of interaction.
The study presented investigated if and how religious tourism experiences are shared on online platforms, as well as which is the relationship between artistic and spiritual experiences mediated by a religious attraction. In particular, the study was designed to answer questions related to functional and content characteristics of OTR about artistic-religious attractions: a) can different types of OTR be distinguished according to the main communicative function they accomplish? b) does the artistic and/or the religious experience emerge from OTR? c) can the artistic aspects of a religious attraction be drivers for a religious unsought experience? d) is the artistic or religious experience ‘revealed’ by certain keywords?
The corpus of analysis consisted of all the OTR in English published on TripAdvisor about the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 370 OTR were retrieved, which were undergone to a three steps analysis.
1) The functional analysis distinguished three types of OTR: ‘technical’ reviews, which only give trip planning-related advices; ‘informative’ reviews, which provide historical, architectural or facilities details; ‘experiential’ reviews, which focus on tourist’s experience and represent the major source of insights for users looking for opinions about the attraction and its perceived touristic value.
2) In a second step, the parts of the OTR reporting artistic or spiritual experiences were identified (inter-coder reliability was measured) and an argumentative analysis was performed, in order to reconstruct the inferential structure of the opinions given, to point out premises and to classify types of arguments used when recommending a visit to the attraction.
3) In the end, a semantic-linguistic analysis was carried out to identify keywords particularly representing of artistic and spiritual experiences. Such keywords might be used in future studies, approaching similar issues from the ‘reverse’ side, that is starting from a keywords search to come to tourists’ experiences.

My name is Nicole Bischof and I have graduated from USI with a Master degree in International Tourism.
I spent last summer in webatelier.net for writing my thesis about the online reputation of tourism destinations. I found the perfect working atmosphere there since I had my workplace in the office with other master and PhD students around who were available for questions, exchanging ideas or just simply for coffee breaks. I also attended courses in the field of eTourism with Prof. Cantoni before, so I really gained a deeper understanding of it and also obtained practical experience by working on the projects for the courses.
Today, one year later, I am working in Market Development for Graubünden Tourism, where online marketing is an integrated and important part of my tasks.
My experience with webatelier.net totally gives me a great background for my job!

My name is Tu Hu and I graduated from USI with a degree as Master of Science in Communication in November, 2012. I did my master thesis research in webatelier.net with a focus on online reputation and social media in mainland China.  

Dr. Elena Marchiori, Nadzeya Kalbaska and Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni were of a great supporter to me during the research period.  We published a white paper “A picturesque online representation of Switzerland: a research conducted on Chinese social network Weibo” based on the thesis. From my personal experience, webatelier.net is definitely a very open and knowledge-sharing workplace with a collaborative and inspirational research network.

Currently I am working in Swissnex China, Shanghai as the Communication Officer. I am responsible for the “digital profile” of the organization: I manage the organization’s social media accounts, website, blog and its quarterly newsletter. By following and keeping records for the events and activities that Swissnex China organized or involved with, I meet many cool people and get to know their interesting stories. I am glad that I am still connecting with Switzerland and people in Switzerland after my relocation back to China. It’s just awesome!

A new Chair has been accredited to the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI, University of Lugano), for a period of four years, by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The Chair will be directed by the Dean of the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni, and it will be dedicated to the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for the development and promotion of sustainable tourism in UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHSs).

Yesterday, May 2^nd, Prof. L. Cantoni has presented the main goals and objectives of the project underlying the new UNESCO Chair to various representatives of UNESCO National Commissions and to other Chair holders from Switzerland, Finland, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Hungary.

The main objective of the newly acknowledged Chair will be to support the WHSs in their online communication, particularly those in developing countries and especially in Africa. Thus, research, education and knowledge dissemination as well as capacity building are the main pillars of the UNESCO Chair. Moreover, the Chair commits itself to fostering in visitors – before, during and after a site visit – a profound understanding of the cultural and natural richness, as well as of the fragility of  these sites, again with the help of new technologies.

Activities of the Chair will be fundamentally sustained by the strong competencies and the knowledge that has been accumulated over the years in the laboratories of the Faculty of Communication Sciences: the New Media in Education Laboratory (NewMinE Lab, in collaboration with the eLab: eLearning Lab) and the webatelier.net, which is fully dedicated to eTourism. Prof. Cantoni is the Scientific Director of all three laboratories.

Here the link to the official USI Press news release (italian version)