On May  8-11 our laboratory was visited by dr. Ulrike Gretzel, associate professor and Director of the Laboratory for Intelligent Systems in Tourism (LIST) at the University of Wollongong (Australia).

Ulrike gave a seminar to Master and PhD students on her current research as well as on a provocative topic on the needs of tourist to “Unplug” and “Facebook free vacations”.

Dr. Maurizio De Rose – visiting researcher from Università della Calabria (Italy) as well as several master students started to write their thesis with prof. Cantoni:

Master in Technologies for Human Communication
Hu Tu

Master in International Tourism
Bischof Nicole
Hakkarainen Doris Maribel
Kondratieva Oxana
Malinverno Laura 

webatelier.net researcher Nadzeya Kalbaska will be talking at eLearning Africa Conference, which will be held in Cotonou (Benin) 23-25 of May 2011.  Nadzeya will present current study we are undertaking on the perception of travel agents of eLearning courses created by Ministries of Tourism worldwide: Nadzeya Kalbaska, Izak van Zyl, Lorenzo Cantoni – eLearning Courses on Tourism Destinations: Perceptions of African Travel Agents

Check full program here.

To download the white paper, please fill the following form. You will receive an email with the URL to download it.

Thank you,
the webatelier.net staff

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Streszczenie. Świadomość tego, co tak naprawdę mówią ludzie o danej destynacji turystycznej w sieci, jest niewątpliwie bardzo istotna dla regionalnych i lokalnych organizacji turystycznych. Celem pracy jest zbadanie prezencji województwa podkarpackiego oraz Bieszczad w Internecie jako obszarów recepcji turystycznej. Analiza treści generowanych przez użytkowników (UGC) zebranych przez wyszukiwarki internetowe wskazuje, że większość poruszanych tematów dotyczy produktów i usług. We wnioskach omówione zostały następstwa wynikające z przeprowadzonych badań oraz rekomendacje dla regionalnych i lokalnych organizacji turystycznych.

♦

On April 3-5 our laboratory was visited by dr. Maciej Piotrowski, General Director of the Institute of Economics of the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow (Poland). Maciej is a Home Mentor of Łukasz Stokłosa from the Sciex Programme (Scientific Exchange Programme NMS-CH) and it was his second short-term visit in Lugano.

Sciex Programme  is part of the Swiss Contribution to the New Member States of the EU. Sciex Programme gives the possibility for young researchers from Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia to conduct their research in cooperation with Swiss researchers in Swiss research institutions.

The main aim of the visit of dr Piotrowski was to meet with Łukasz and his Host Mentor in Switzerland – prof. Lorenzo Cantoni. During the meetings they discussed several topics related to Łukasz’s work as well as current and future cooperation between USI and UITM in Rzeszow. After the meeting on Tuesday Maciej gave a presentation about the research conducted by his Institute of Economics on harvesting data from search engines. Then there was a time for Easter wishes.

Silvia De Ascaniis, a PhD candidate of the Faculty of Communication Sciences and collaborator of webatelier.net, has recently come back from Wollongong, Australia, where she spent 12 months doing research under the supervision of prof. Ulrike Gretzel. Silvia won a fellowship for prospective researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation, which gave her the possibility to stay at a research institution abroad. She was hosted by the Institute for Innovation in Business and Social Research (IIBSoR) of the University of Wollongong, which  was rated in 2011 as the Australia’s only research to be “well above world standard” in tourism by Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Initiative. Over there – Down-under, as Australia is used to be called – she made a priceless experience, both from the research and the personal point of view.

Prof. Gretzel – Ulli – arrived at IIBSoR a couple of weeks before Silvia did (actually, Silvia followed her when she decided to move from Texas to Australia), and since then she worked to create a group of young researchers in the field of tourism and new technologies, to weave a network of researchers from other Australian universities to start scientific collaborations and with local tourism agencies to put scientific findings to use in daily practice. Silvia was a witness of the beginning of this process, and had the opportunity to meet a number of people passionate of studying tourism trends and dynamics.

During the research period she worked on three main issues:

- identifying and understanding the reasons given by tourists to report their positive/negative experience on a destination in online travel reviews – her PhD topic

- measuring the predictability of online travel reviews titles to select useful reviews – a paper presented at ENTER 2012

- understanding the role of visitor information services in the future – a study developed together with Tourism Wollongong, the local tourism agency, and presented at CAUTHE 2012.

The experience was really “well above the standard” for Silvia, who gave birth to her first child over there, the little Kangaroo Francesco!

A collaboration agreement has been concluded between Hospitality Youth Initiative/Hospitality Induction Program and webatelier.net to an eLearning training platform.  HYI/HIP program is based on the attitude: “Attitude is everything”.  A cornerstone of the training program is an upskilling of Service in the Hospitality Industry. This can only be achieved by the correct attitude towards Service. The learners are undergoing a Soft Skills /Attitude Awareness Course, a Foundation Bridging Hospitality/Tourism/Service course, HIV/Aids, technical skills course and a leadership component. 

Currently Angelina Jovic, a member of webatelier team is in South Africa, where she is observing the courses and creating inputs for the game.
The HYI/HIP course has two equally important components:
- classes based on the experiential learning where students are learning about communication skills, soft skills, workplace itself and about themselves
- outdoor activities, like: hiking, abseiling, where team work skills are developed.

eLearning game will cover same elements like HYI/HIP training, by using videos, images, cartoons and textual scenarios. The idea of the game is that students are passing through different levels of complexity, which will lead them from very basic elements of the service to the service excellence. After finishing online training program (eLearning game), students should be able to understand, apply and provide service excellence on the work place.   

See the demo of the game here.

 7th World Congress on Snow and Mountain Tourism. La Massana (Andorra), April 11 -12, 2012
Cantoni, Lorenzo: Websites: From initial excitement to booking and loyalty (keynote speaker)

16th International Conference on Corporate Reputation, Brand, Identity and Competitiveness.
Milan (IT), May 30 – June 1, 2012
Mandelli, Andreina; Marchiori,Elena; Javornik, Ana and Cantoni, Lorenzo:
Online Agenda Building within the Tourism Destination Reputation Process.

Travel and Tourism Research Association Annual Conference (TTRA 2012): “Innovations in Destination Marketing Research”. Virginia Beach, VA (USA), June 17-19, 2012
Zach, Florian; Marchiori, Elena; Cantoni, Lorenzo:
Web Marketing and Social Media: The case of Adoption and Outsourcing by Swiss DMOs.