The 26th ENTER eTourism Conference, ENTER2019, will be organized by IFITT January 30 – February 1, 2019 in Nicosia, Cyprus. Now you might be asking yourself why you should attend this conference next year. As the research track chair of the conference, at least five reasons come up to my mind:

1. Great tourism conference location

I have never been to Nicosia myself, but from what I have seen, it will be a unique experience. A Mediterranean destination like no other, Nicosia will provide an interesting and historical background to an event so focused in the future as ENTER conference is:

Nicosia is a sophisticated and cosmopolitan city, rich in history and culture that combines its historic past with the amenities of a modern city. Nicosia has established itself as the island’s financial capital and its main international business centre. The ‘new’ Nicosia developed outside the walls became a contemporary, business and cultural centre. Just a few miles away are enchanting places of interest such as Byzantine churches and monasteries, archaeological sites and charming villages. The uniqueness of such a combination makes the capital of Cyprus a place worth knowing and certainly a place worth visiting!

2. Important conference topic

In 2019, the ENTER conference will focus on eTourism: Towards a Sustainable Digital Society. We are living in a society where technology is becoming more and more pervasive. Almost everything that can be will be done digitally. Information and communication technologies continue opening new possibilities to develop our society. However, this development needs to be responsible and sustainable. Travel and tourism have both positive and negative aspects but they are nonetheless critical and central part of our society.  With this theme, we want to increase awareness of how eTourism (ie. ICTs in Tourism) can contribute to making our society more sustainable and our planet a better place to live for us and for generations after us. We have to start thinking about other aspects of tourism besides maximising revenues for businesses and destinations, even though economic sustainability is as important as ecological and social sustainability. How can technology make tourism better for people, planet, and profits?

3. Fantastic people and networking opportunities

For me, the ENTER conference has always felt like the second home and the community almost as a family. Never ever in any other conference have I experienced such goodwill and friendliness than at ENTER. I hope to follow this path and warmly welcome especially those who have not been at ENTER previously to join us.

And it is not just that people are friendly and nice, they are also professionals with great expertise on various eTourism topics. Some of the world’s most cited tourism academics such as Dimitrios Buhalis and Rob Law are frequent guests at ENTER, typically also presenting their latest research. If you want to meet people who are working on virtual reality and gamification, sharing economy, social media, customer research, recommender systems and computer science in general, eLearning, and data, among many others, this is a place to be for you.

4. New knowledge

The ENTER conference is divided into three tracks: research track, destination track, and the industry track. This means that there are the latest knowledge from eTourism research presented at the conference, as well innovative and benchmark level cases from the tourism industry and tourism destinations on how they are utilizing information and communication technologies. If you are working in the tourism field, this conference provides you with the latest information on how technology is changing the industry. If you want to come to ENTER and present your research results or how your destination or business is developing and utilizing eTourism, please see the calls at www.enter2019.org.

5. Fantastic publication opportunities for academics

As far as tourism conferences go, ENTER offers excellent opportunities to publish your research. First of all, all research papers accepted to be presented in the conference will be published by Springer in Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2019. You can find 2018 proceedings here. It has been downloaded already almost 25 000 times in the first six months after publication. You can also submit shorter research notes to the conference. These research notes will be published in e-Review of Tourism Research. 

The best papers submitted to the conference will also get a great opportunity to be included in the fast track volume of Journal of Information Technology and Tourism. All this means that the academics joining the conference get an excellent opportunity to publish and distribute their research results to a wide audience. For details see Call for Papers.

Join us in Cyprus for ENTER2019

I warmly welcome everyone to join us for the next installment of the ENTER conference. We have an excellent team organizing the conference and without a doubt, it will be amazing as always. See www.enter2019.org for details.

Juho Pesonen

I study how changes in technology and consumer behaviour affect tourism marketing. Professor of Tourism Business at University of Eastern Finland and IFITT President.