Focus on Market Research Data: TourMIS workshop
On 3rd and 4th September 2009, MODUL University Vienna hosted the 5th ECM&ETC Joint TourMIS Workshop. Eighty-six delegates representing city and national tourist organisations, universities and companies from the hospitality and tourism industry from 25 different countries in Europe came to Vienna to attend the TourMIS workshop and participate in the Seminar on Tourism Marketing and the Social Web. The event was organized by European Cities Marketing, the European Travel Commission & MODUL University Vienna and sponsored by the Austrian National Tourist Office and the Vienna Tourist Board.
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Today, Karl Wöber, the President and Dean of Modul University Vienna and also one of the speakers at the TourMIS workshop shares some details about the history and the future of this project.
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The project has been running for 5 years now. Where did the idea come from?
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The principal idea of TourMIS is to support managers of tourism boards and other related organisations with the latest market research data in order to enable them to make better-informed decisions. For international umbrella organisations like European Cities Marketing (ECM) and the European Travel Commission (ETC), this is the ideal platform for members to exchange information about their destination’s performance and to investigate future market trends. Since the success of a collaborative marketing information system like TourMIS strongly depends on the input of the users, the TourMIS workshop is the annual meeting where the users have the opportunity to share their experiences and to discuss future developments of the network and the system.
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The TourMIS workshop takes place every year in September, how do the topics vary and to what extent do they remain the same?
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The topics presented and discussed at the TourMIS workshop develop over the year but always include an introductory session in order to update new participants on the fundamental issues in comparing international tourism statistics. System tools for analysing and transforming simple data into valuable information are presented. Every year new features are introduced and discussed with the participants.
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What new aspects did the last TourMIS workshop in September cover?
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This year we introduced a new collaborative tool for forecasting tourism demand. This new feature allows managers to share their estimates of recent trends in tourism demand. The innovative aspect of this new tool is that managers are constantly evaluated when they are giving estimates, and those managers who are particularly accurate in their estimates are weighted higher when the overall forecast is calculated by the system. The combination of quantitative and qualitative forecasting methods promises that TourMIS will be able to provide very accurate forecasts of tourism demand in the future.
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For what public are the TourMIS workshops useful?
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The TourMIS workshop is open to all ECM and ETC members and other tourism professionals and educators interested in tourism statistics and comparative studies. Thanks to our local sponsors, the Austrian National Tourism Office and the Vienna Tourist Board, participation is free.
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What topics would you like to cover in the future?
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Ideally I would like to see an international initiative to centrally collect standardised information from visitor and travel surveys. A European-wide, regularly organised survey could provide very valuable, qualitative information which is desperately needed by the tourism industry. More and better market research information leads to better decisions made by every individual in the industry; better decisions by the actors in the tourism industry, however, sustain and enhance tourism development and create a comparative advantage for Europe.
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Karl Wöber is Full Professor, Director of the MBA Tourism Management program, and Founding President of MODUL University Vienna. Karl acquired his PhD from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration where he became Associate Professor and Deputy Department Head at the
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Institute for Tourism and Leisure Studies in 2000. Since 2005, he has been a Visiting Senior Fellow of the School of Management at the University of Surrey (UK), and a Senior Fellow of the National Laboratory of Tourism and eCommerce at the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Temple University (Philadelphia, USA). His main research activities are in the fields of computer support in tourism and hospitality marketing, decision support systems, multivariate methods and strategic planning. Karl
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Wöber has also been Technical Advisor to European Cities Marketing and the European Travel Commission for many years.
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If you would like to know more about the TourMIS workshop, or view the presentations and speakers’ biographies, please visit www.modul.ac.at/tourmis
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