Asta Adukaite has recently obtained the Master’s degree in Economics and Communication, with a Major in International Tourism at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI, Lugano, Switzerland). For her final dissertation she has conducted a research concerning the website’s communication quality and usability of a selected case study: MSC Cruises, the leading cruise line in the world. Asta also holds the Bachelor’s degree in Law with a minor in Management obtained at Mykolas Romeris University (Vilnius, Lithuania).  Since June 2011 Asta has been working as a research assistant at webatelier.net, a research and development laboratory that deals with all aspects of New Media for Tourism Communication at USI.

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Lorenzo Cantoni graduated in Philosophy and holds a PhD in Education and Linguistics.
He is full professor at USI: Università della Svizzera italiana (University of Lugano, Switzerland), Faculty of Communication Sciences, where he serves as Dean of the Faculty.
L. Cantoni is scientific director of webatelier.net, as well as of NewMinE Lab: New Media in Education Lab, and eLab: eLearning Lab.
In the field of eTourism, he is research track chair of ENTER2013, and has been member of the Board of IFITT: International Federation for Information Technologies in Travel and Tourism, and chair of the Conference ENTER2011: eTourism – Present and Future Interaction.
L. Cantoni is professor of New Media for Tourism Communication at the Master in International Tourism at USI, and director of the Doctoral School CROSS-FIELD: CROSS-FertilizatIon betwEen formal and informal Learning through Digital technologies.

View Lorenzo’s profile on USI website.

Silvia moved to Switzerland in 2001 from her home-town on the Italian Adriatic coast, to study Communications at the University of Lugano (USI). There, she first completed a Bachelor and then a Master degree, with a thesis about argumentation (i.e. reasoning) in Bioethics. She is now working on a PhD dissertation, under the supervision of Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni, which intends to investigate argumentation dynamics taking place on the Internet by means of social networks. In her research she focuses online fora and reviews – i.e. UGC – about some selected destinations trying to answer questions like: what motivates people to leave for a journey? What do they look for, that they cannot have in their place?

She got acquainted with tourism when she was picking tomatoes and talking to a friend in a monastery – one of those places where silence and atmosphere particularly help with thinking! Tourism became her favourite context of interest, because of the possibility it gives to understand human nature. The argumentative analysis of UGC allows, in fact, to unveil implicit premises used by people in their reasoning. It also provides insights regarding the common knowledge, beliefs, values and preferences – more synthetically, the cultural or contextual premises – on which tourists’ arguments are constructed.

Thanks to a fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation, she spent one year at the University of Wollongong (Australia), working with Prof. Ulrike Gretzel. There she worked on two main issues: measuring the predictability of online travel reviews titles to select useful reviews, and understanding the role of visitor information services in the future.

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Alessandro Inversini holds a PhD in Communication Sciences from Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland, where he was Researcher and Executive Director of webatelier.net, a research and development laboratory which mainly works on new media in tourism communication. Alessandro is now Managing Director of ticinoinfo SA, the Regional Competence Center for New Media in Tourism of Canton Ticino (CH), and Lecturer at Università della Svizzera italiana, Faculty of Communication Science. His fields of interest are communication technologies and eTourism and his research interests deal with destination online communication, eMarketing, web reputation, web2.0 and social media marketing.

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Nadzeya is a PhD candidate at the University of Lugano, Switzerland. Her research activities primarily focus on eLearning integration into the hospitality and tourism sector. Since 2008, Nadzeya has been working as a researcher at webatelier.net, a research and development laboratory of the Faculty of Communication Sciences, which deals with New Media for Tourism Communication.  She manages here eLearning-related projects both for academia and industry. Nadzeya also teaches at the European Humanities University (Vilnius, Lithuania) at the Bachelor program “Cultural Heritage and Tourism”. She holds a Master’s Degree in Economics and Communication, Major in International Tourism from the University of Lugano, Switzerland. Before starting her academic career, Nadzeya worked for the Belarusian Ministry of Tourism and in the Event Management sector.

Research interests: eTourism, eLearning, Education and Training, Destination Management Organization Trainings

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Elena is a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the University of Lugano (Università della Svizzera italiana, USI), Switzerland. Elena’s research interests focus on web reputation, online public opinions, and eWord-of-Mouth in the e-Tourism field. Before starting her PhD she worked in the tourism sector as a web consultant where she was principally involved in online communication and marketing strategies. She was a visiting scholar at Erasmus University (Rotterdam, Netherlands) where she investigated the intersection between the research fields place branding and eTourism. Elena is currently a visiting scholar at the National Laboratory for Tourism & eCommerce at Temple University’s School of Tourism and Hospitality Management (Philadelphia, PA, USA) where she is working towards the completion of her Ph.D. in fall 2012. Her visiting scholarship is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. During her PhD studies, she was a teaching assistant for the courses ‘Online Communication and Promotion’ and ‘New Media for Tourism Communication’, and managed various applied research projects at the webatelier.net laboratory (both at USI, in Lugano, Switzerland). She holds a Master’s degree in Media Management from the University of Lugano (USI), and earned her Bachelor’s degree in Communication Sciences major in Mass Media at the University of Padua (Italy).

Research interests: eTourism, web reputation, online public opinions, eWord-of-Mouth

View Elena’s profile on USI website