ENTERSynopsis

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IFITT is an international organization which aims at providing a platform for sharing, exchanging and developing of new ideas in technological applications to travel and tourism. To achieve this goal, IFITT organized ENTER2010 together withwebatelier.net of the Universita della Svizzera italiana (Universityof Lugano, Switzerland) which had reached its 17th year. ENTER2010 brought together international travel and tourism specialists, decisionmakers, technologists, academics, educators, destination managers, graduate students, aswell as governmental representatives, all of them have the interest inInformation and Communication Technologies in Travel and Tourism. Carrying an overall theme of “eTourism: Horizons”, ENTER2010 was held with three full days of sessions on keynotes, presentations, discussions, and workshops and had three main tracks, including the Research track. The events were designed in a way that enabled a maximum amount of information exchange and interaction. Additionally, ENTER2010 had a PhD Workshop one day prior to the main conference. Through this workshop, students had in-depth discussions of their proposals with faculty facilitators and other students through which they could gain some new insights from each other. Following the tradition, ENTER2010 provided some social programmes including wine tasting, welcome reception, gala dinner and tours for participants to network in a relaxing environment.

 

ENTER2010 was officially opened on February 10, 2010. During the opening session, Andrew Frew (IFITT President), Dimitrios Buhalis (ENTER2010 Overall Chair) and Lorenzo Cantoni (Conference Host) greeted and welcomed delegates as well as introduced the conference programme. Immediately after the introduction, Christoph Brülhart, Online Marketing Manager of Switzerland Tourism, and Lycien Jantos, Manager eBusiness Solutions & Software Engineering, delivered the first keynote speech on online marketing promotion of Switzerland. Following the keynote session, the first concurrent session was held. Presentations in the parallel sessions were grouped into different tracks. In the research programme, there were 15 sessions which covered a wide variety of topics in the context of ICTs and travel & tourism.

 

The presentations were generally with good quality and queries were well responded. Considering the number of participants, more than 300 delegates from many countries in the world joined ENTER2010, which reflected the event was a successful international congress. Besides, the 52 research papers in the proceedings underwent a double-blind peer-review process. They not only reflected different disciplinary backgrounds, but also a variety of topics and applied methodological approaches.

 

by Rob Law, 2010

 

 

Swiss day @ENTER2010, a one day event, dedicated to the representatives of tourism industry of the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, as well as attracting Italian operators, was held in Italian language and attracted more than 100 participants. It was a great and interesting opportunity to have new people from the Swiss and Italian tourism industry around the table to discuss innovative local issues. The next topics were discussed along the day -- eCommerce: state of the art and future scenarios, Horizons of eTourism and Tourists and Destinations online.
 

The next invited speakers were present: Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni - Università della Svizzera italiana, Marco Sorgesa - Lugano Turismo, Prof. Rodolfo Baggio – Università Bocconi, Carlo Fontana – Hotel Lugano Dante, Filippo Cervi – Vortal Consulting, Andrea Realini – Ferrovie Federali Svizzere, Lorenzo Montagna – Yahoo.it, Enrico Bertoldo – Amadeus Italia, Marco Corradino – Bravofly, Prof. Luisa Mich – Università di Trento, Stefano Zoia – Tinext, Alessandro Strazzanti e Marco Pion – Promax Communication, Patrick Lardi – Ticino Turismo.

Moreover, researchers of the webatelier.net held a productive workshop on online reputation and promotion.

 

by Nadzeya Kalbaska (ENTER2010 Local Host)