Today starts the annual ENTER eTourism conference taking place in Dublin from the 21st to the 24th of January, and will bring more than 350 attendees from all over the world. The International Federation for Information Technology and Travel and Tourism (IFITT) will spend this 21st conference focusing on «Where Social Inspiration meets Dynamic eTourism Innovation».
According to IFITT President Professor Dimitrios Buhalis, this year sounds really promising : «I am absolutely pleased about the fantastic conference programme that our IFITT team and the local team in Dublin have organized. ENTER 2014 will be bigger than ever before with an exceptionally wide range of topics and the presence of a great number of tourism and technology giants like Google, Tripadvisor, Amadeus, Realex Payments and Facebook.»
The first day of the conference will be dedicated to interaction through workshops, PhD students will get the opportunity to discuss their research with all the participants, including peers, leading supervisors and scholars from the eTourism industry. What a experience for the students, getting critics and tips from such a varied professional crowd !
The second day will involve keynote speakers coming from the most famous tourism and technology organisations, such as Mike Short (Telefonica Europe / O2), Des O’ Mahony (Bookassist), Dave Pavelko (Google), Aoife Desmond (Facebook), Quentin Moores (DerbySoft) and Adrian Hans (TripAdvisor). This conference day will work in parallel with the Irish eTourism day focusing on «Digital Strategy & Differentiation - A Tourist Board Perspective», and will end with a reception at the Guinness Storehouse and its famous Gravity bar.
The third day will welcome some more famous keynote speakers such as Nate Bucholz (Google), Aoife Desmond (Facebook) and Sean O'Connor (Bing) organising activities around presentations and workshops. To get an idea of what will be discussed, here are some of the topics for the day : Gamification & Augmented Reality, Creativity and Innovation in DMOs' Digital (Marketing) Communications, Effective Use of Search and Social Media Marketing Tools. The day will finish at the Old Jameson Distillery with the closing night and the awards ceremony.
The fourth and last day of the ENTER 2014 conference will focus on upcoming eTourism issues especially in Asia. To conclude, a final discussion will be organized with Kevin O'Sullivan (SITA) , Paul Baron (Tourism Victoria), Ehud Ben-haim (Google), Orla Carroll (Failte Ireland) and Zheng Xiang (Virginia Tech) to discuss the new trends in ICT and tourism.
This event seems to get bigger and bigger every year, with giants of the IT industry sharing their ideas to the Tourism and Event industry. The conference allows the eTourism field to get updates and new trends regarding marketing, sales, communicating with their customers and also prepare these professionals for innovative Information & Communications Technology.
Source : Karantzavelou,V. (2014, January 14) Countdown to ENTER 2014 - the world’s most important eTourism Conference
Retrieved from http://www.traveldailynews.com/news/article/58507/countdown-to-enter-2014#sthash.jfZzbyhe.dpuf
"Image courtesy of hyena reality / FreeDigitalPhotos.net"
No comments:
Post a Comment