The results of the project of the Laboratory of Cultural Economics are presented at the international conference ENTER 2019

From January 29 to February 1,  ENTER 2019 - international tourism conference was held by IFITT (International Federation for Information Technologies, Travel & Tourism) in Nicosia. The tutor of the management department and the staff member of the Laboratory of Cultural Economics Alexey Gorgadze presented the first results of a large project on the study of the tourism product of the imperial capitals.

“Representatives from different parts of the world came to the conference. In 4 days, more than 30 sections were organized and more than a hundred reports were presented. Research topics covered a wide range of issues: Tourist Experience, Technology in Tourism Industry, Destination Marketing, Sharing Economy & Service Robots and Service Automation, etc.

I presented my report in the Data Analytics and Peer-to-Peer Economy section. It was devoted to a comparative semantic analysis of the imperial theme in the reviews of tourists who visited St. Petersburg, and in the description of tourism products on travel agency websites. The idea is that travel agencies and official agencies (such as St. Petersburg Tourism Development Committee) seek to promote the imperial brand. Our goal is to evaluate the response to this proposal from tourists. To do this, we have collected digital footprints in the form of reviews on TripAdvisor and descriptions of tourism products. Using the methods of semantic analysis, we compared the mention of the imperial theme in two cases and found that while in St. Petersburg the imperial theme does not find the proper response in the reviews of tourists. These are the first results, which in the future we will compare with the results of other cases (Istanbul, Berlin, Vienna).

I talked with many interesting researchers. So, with Professor Juho Pesonen from the University of Eastern Finland, we agreed on mutual scientific and educational cooperation between our laboratories and master's programs. 

Of course, such conferences are very useful, and especially for young researchers, because you can meet such science luminaries as Professor Dimitros Bukhalis (Head of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality at Bournemouth University, Director of the eTourism Laboratory and Vice President of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism Association). Professor Bukhalis is familiar with the activities of our Laboratory and we also managed to communicate fruitfully with him. 

As a result, an article was published in the scientific journal "e-Review of Tourism Research (eRTR)" based on the report.