ENTER 2012 – IT technology and eTourism Seminar – my observations

I was attending and one of the Industry Presentation speaker at ENTER 2012 seminar in Helsingborg, Sweden 24.1 – 27.1.2012. The seminar was organized by IFITT, International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism – the eTourism community.  The IFITT mission is to network eTourism stakeholders and nurture eTourism innovation, exploration and knowledge. IFITT’s vision is to create global eTourism knowledge network and community. IFITT members – researchers, practitioners and companies active in eTourism – treasure the power of networking and global knowledge sharing for improving their competitiveness and innovation.Mr. Dimitrios Buhalis (Bournemouth University, UK), Mr. Rodolfbo Baggio (Bocconi University, Italy), Mr. Nick Hall (European Travel Commission, Belgium), and Ms. Tinkara Pavlovcic Kapitanovic (Slovenian Tourist Board, Slovenia) are among those active people behind IFITT. ENTER has been organized now for 19 times. It has established itself as the most important and prestigious eTourism forum for attendees from academia, industry, government, and other organizations. ENTER2012 event put on stage with 6 Keynotes, 51 Research papers, 59 Industry Presentations, 16PhD students presentations and 14 Scandinavian day presentations. The main theme for 2012 was the present and the future of eTourism technological applications and the role both demand and supply play in this hectic arena.Tuesday was designated to PhD Workshop as Pre-ENTER event. The topics were Technology Mediated Tourism Experiences, Travel Planning, Social Media Adoptation and Tourism Distribution.  Quite many were focusing on mobile technology which seem to me to be very essential especially for the destinations and in business travel. Tuesday was also signed for Scandinavian perspective. The same topics were seen and heard there as well; mobile technology, social media’s essential role today and how to communicate digitally.Wednesday was the start for the main seminars. The main topics were  about social media, globalisation and eTourism, and electronic marketing. Mrs. Helena Egan from TripAdvisor showed in her presentation how reviews can be a strategic tool for marketing for the destination point of view. eLearning got a role also in the presentation by Mr. Bruce Marting from Online Travel Training. This has been an issue I have been talking in years back in Helsinki City. It is saving time, it is giving opportunity to reach those contacts frequently who are physically far away. eLearning can be a solution to do destination branding. The communication tools and innovations are those issues which need to be discussed and planned carefully.My own presentation was on Thursday. The topic was “Geography of Fear”. This theory has sociological background in Finland but I have been using this also when talking about visitors in Helsinki. They fear of moving around in Helsinki area which has been quite narrow. Our solution was in those these to establish a special campaign called “Nordic Oddity”. This was back in 2004 – 2005. The main task was to change Helsinki’s image to be more youngish, expand the area where visitors were moving around and to prolong their length of stay by suggesting visits outside of that “territory of tourism” in Helsinki. The length of stay has been prolongin over the years – until last year. Surprisingly to me, Helsinki’s average length of stay has been declining in foreign markets. I am still wondering what are those reasong for this. Afterwards I had great discussions with other academic people who attended at the seminar. Next year the seminar will be in Innsbruch, Austria.I liked Helsingborg even though my stay was there quite short. Campus Helsingborg is a young and important part of famous Lund University. Helsingborg has a population of close to 130,000 inhabitants and its therey Sweden’s 9th biggest city. Helsingborg is situated at the narrowest part of the strait between Sweden and Denmark. Actually I flew to Copenhagen and took from there a train to Helsingör (Danish side) and there was only 4 km distance by ferry to Helsingborg.