Ricci, F.; Xiang, Z. at ENTER2016 eTourism Conference

1. Panel with:
Francesco Ricci, University of Bozen
Zheng Xiang, Virginia Tech
How do we search?
An Issue from the JITT Research Manifesto

2. JITT Manifesto
 Information Technology & Tourism
interdisciplinary by nature
 Results from computer science,
inform. systems and social sciences
 Contribute to theory building, but also application development
 Future research issues in IT and tourism (as a result of JITT
workshop in June 2014, Vienna)
 Identify, structure and frame challenges and topics
 Provide guidelines on strategic research issues for the community

3. Layered e-Tourism “Ecosystem”
Individual
Group/ social
Corporation
Network/ industry
Government/ policy
 E-Tourism directly related to innovation and change, or more
radically, to digital disruption
 This on its side refers to digital infrastructure
 Different layers of “entities”, their interactions and challenges
 Second JITT workshop in Milan, 2015; two topics emerged:
 Issue of search
 Group decision making

4. Group Decision Making
 Overall goal: Understand how groups make decisions in
tourism (destinations)
 Considering complex user interests / model
 Set up as a “world-wide” test
 As first step offline study with Universities, starting with
three Universities: Bolzano, Klagenfurt, TU Wien (to test
and develop experiment)
Three phases study:
1. Pre-questionnaire (personality traits, tourist roles &
destinations preferences)
2. Group meeting (observed discussion and decision of the
group)
3. Post-questionnaire (Group choice, decision scheme,
members‘ similarity, satisfaction & experience)

5. Group Decision Making cont.
Done TU WIEN – as part of an e-commerce course
 47 students participated (a group consists of four decision
makers and two observers)
 Done:
 Three phases of the study
 Interviews with observers
 Data structure
 Currently – qualitative data analysis
 Once frame set we will invite you to join

6. Panel on search
 Zheng Xiang, Virginia Tech
 Francesco Ricci, University of Bozen