Dr. Karl Wöber 

Founding President

MODUL University, Vienna, Austria

Karl Wöber is Full Professor and Founding President of MODUL University Vienna. Karl holds a PhD from the Vienna University of Economics and Business where he became Associate Professor and Deputy Department Head at the Institute for Tourism and Leisure Studies in 2000. In 1997, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Leisure Studies. Since 2005, he is a Visiting Senior Fellow of the School of Management at the University of Surrey, and a Senior Fellow of the National Laboratory of Tourism and eCommerce at the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Temple University, 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 Wöber has also been Technical Advisor to European Cities Marketing and the European Travel Commission for many years.​

Dr. Beatriz Plaza Inchausti 
Professor in Urban and Regional Economics 
University of the Basque Country, Spain 

Beatriz Plaza has a PhD in Economics from the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, obtained her MBA from IESE Business School and, at present, works as Professor in Urban and Regional Economics at the University of the Basque Country. Her research interests include: Cultural Policy as Development Policy; Urban Regeneration; Economic Impact of Museums; Cultural Branding; Regional Policy; Measurement and Economic Analysis of Regional Economics; Cultural Economics. Among other current research projects, Beatriz Plaza is working on one financed by the European Commission-Culture (2012-2014) entitled "Assessing effective tools to enhance cultural participation". She has published numerous articles in journals such as Tourism Management, Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Cultural Heritage, European Planning Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, International 
Journal of Arts Management. Her recent presentations include the Academy of Art in Berlin (Akademie Der Künste – Berlin) or Stern Business School (New York University). 

Dr. Mari Paz Moral 
Associate Professor 
University of the Basque Country, Spain

Paz Moral Zuazo holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Basque Country. She is currently an associate professor in the department of Applied Economics III (Econometrics and Statistics) at the UPV/EHU. Between 2008 and 2010, she worked in the Cantabrian Institute of Statistics as an analyst. Her research has been developed in the field of time series analysis, particularly in the analysis of regional economic conditions and the tourism sector. She also contributed to the development of input-output tables, macroeconomic models to explain the business cycle and studies of economic convergence. She has published in national and international journals such as the International Journal Forecasting, Annals of Tourism Research, Economics Bulletin or Bulletin of Economic Research.

Dr. Daniel Fesenmaier 
Professor and Director of the National Laboratory for Tourism and eCommerce (NLTeC) 
School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Temple University, USA

Dr. Fesenmaier is author of articles dealing with tourism marketing, advertising evaluation and information technology. He is co-founding editor of Tourism Analysis; past Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Information Technology and Tourism, and is editor of the Foundations in Tourism Research Series in the Journal of Travel Research. He is a Fellow, International Academy for the Study of Tourism, an adjunct Professor, Modul University – Vienna; and Co-founder, Tourism Education Futures Initiative. As director of the NLTeC, Dr. Fesenmaier has directed a number of studies for tourism organizations throughout the United States and elsewhere, and has designed several marketing information systems including AskDan and SMART, which have been used by destination marketing organizations as benchmarking tools for evaluating tourism marketing and development strategies.

Dr. Pilar González 
Professor 
University of the Basque Country, Spain 

Pilar Gonzalez Casimiro holds a PhD in Economics from the University of the Basque Country and a Master of Science (MSc) in Statistics from the London School of Economics(Department of Statistics and Mathematical Science). She is a University Lecturer in the Department of Econometrics and Statistics (Applied Economics III), Faculty of Economics and Business Administration where she teaches courses in Econometrics and Time Series Analysis, basic and advanced, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her teaching work has resulted in the publication of several books on Econometrics, Time Series Analysis and Forecasting Techniques. Her research has focused primarily on the field of Macroeconometrics and Time Series Analysis (Systems Economic Analysis and Economic Indicators). These lines of research have developed in the areas of economic convergence, regional and urban economics, economics of tourism and natural resource economics, among others. Another line of research developed in recent years is the measurement of economic impacts by Input-Output Tables and Social Accounting Matrices, both from the point of view of supply and demand. The results of their works are published in national and international journals: Journal of Forecasting, International Journal of Forecasting, Annals of Tourism Research, Fisheries Research, Spanish Economic Review, Statistics, Spanish, among others, as well as in several books.

Dr. Tobias Kuhnimhof 
Institute for Mobility Research (ifmo), BMW Group, Munich, Germany

Tobias Kuhnimhof studied Ceivil Engineering and Applied Cultural Studies at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany and the University of Connecticut, USA. From 2002 to 2010, Tobias Kuhnimhof held a full researcher position at the Institute for Transport Studies (IfV) of the University of Karlsruhe. Here he also obtained his Doctorate Degree in the field of travel demand modeling in 2007. In 2007, Tobias Kuhnimhof also worked for INRETS, Paris, and from 2009 to 2010 he was director of statistics and modeling at STRATA GmbH, Karlsruhe, a company specializing in data and information management for the travel and tourism industry. Since 2010, Tobias Kuhnimhof has workeds as a research coordinator for the Institute for Mobility Research, ifmo, a mobility research establishment of the BMW Group. Tobias Kuhnimhof is a leading expert in longitudinal data analysis and modeling, as well as international comparisons of travel behavior and its evolution over time. He is a member of several national and international committees on surveying, modeling and forecasting travel and has authored more than 30 journal papers in German and English.

Dr. Emilio Torres-Manzanera 
Research Assistant Professor 
Department of Statistics of the University of Oviedo

His main area of research is applied statistical methods in the tourism sector. His research interests are in the general areas of uncertainty quantification, data analysis, social networks, graphical models and statistical programming. He received his B.Sc. degree in Mathematics and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Basque Country. Currently he is the Head of the Statistical Consulting Unit of the University of Oviedo.

Dr. Douglas Frechtling 
Professor of Tourism Studies, International Institute of Tourism Studies 
George Washington University, USA

Dr. Frechtling began his career as an economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and later served as Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He was founding Director of the U.S. Travel Data Center in 1973 and served as its chief executive officer for 14 years. Dr. Frechtling has also served as a consultant to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Airline Economics, Inc., Travel Industry Association of America and other tourism organizations. He is a Fellow of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, Fellow of the Tourism Society of Great Britain, past Chairman of the UNWTO Education Council, past president of the Travel and Tourism Research Association and a recipient of that organization's Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, he authored Forecasting Tourism Demand: Methods and Strategies, published by Butterworth-Heinemann. He has published widely on the economic impact of tourism and his recent research is accessible at http://home.gwu.edu/~frechtli Dr. Frechtling holds a Ph.D. degree in economics from George Washington University, and recently earned a Graduate Certificate in Survey Design and Data Analysis from the University.

Dr. Aurkene Alzua-Sorzabal 
Executive Director of CICtourGUNE, the Centre for Cooperative Research in Tourism 
of the Basque Country, Spain.

Dr. Alzua-Sorzabal received her Ph.D. in Outdoor Recreation and International Tourism from Purdue University, Indiana, U.S.A (1999). Dr. Alzua is currently the Executive Director of CICtourGUNE, and a faculty member at the University of Deusto. 
She has extensive academic experience and has led significant research programs at national and European level in the field of Tourism and Technologies: measurement and modeling of ICT in tourism and the adoption and integration of ICT in tourism. She has numerous publications and she presently serves as a Board Member for several organisations including, IFITT, TTRA Europe Chapter, EUREKA TOURISME, the European network for technological innovations in the tourism sector, the Basque Innovation Agency and member of the Editorial Board of JITT, Journal of Information Technology & Tourism. Moreover, she is member of the Statistics Committee of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). ​

Dr. Jon Kepa Gerrikagoitia 
Director of Tourism Systems in the Digital Age for CICtourGUNE, the Centre for Cooperative Research in Tourism of the Basque Country, Spain. 

Jon Kepa Gerrikagoitia earned his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Mondragon (2006). Since he received his Bachelor´s Degree in Computer Engineering (1993) and Master Degree in Software Engineering (1995), he worked as software engineer until 1998 gaining experience as software analyst and project manager.
In 1998 he joined the University of Mondragon where he has been a lecturer and researcher in the software engineering and information systems department for eleven years. In his first period at the university he worked in many projects gaining experience mainly in Web Engineering and Business Intelligence until he started his PhD. His research activity began in 2001 and the most important research areas he addressed are interoperability, Service Oriented Architectures and Web Engineering. His work as researcher has been applied in public and private companies, to name but a few: Fagor Group, and the Basque Country's Public Health System.
In 2009, he joined CICtourGUNE as Senior Researcher. He is currently the Director of the research area named Tourism Systems in the Digital Age. He has published articles in international scientific journals and has participated in a number of national and international conferences. Dr. Gerrikagoitia's recent work has focused on the Basque tourism sector, including projects related to the development of measurement and economic analysis of tourism activity at the sub national level, and on improving the management of regional and local tourism destinations.

Dr. Steve MacFeely 
Assistant Director General, Ireland Statistics Office, Ireland.

Dr. Steve MacFeely is the Assistant Director General of the Central Statistics Office in Ireland and Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Policy Studies at University College Cork, Ireland. He is a member of the Technical Advisory Board to the UNWTO, the INRouTe Scientific Committee and is currently the Chairman of the International Statistical Institute Committee on Tourism Statistics. His PhD dealt with how to construct robust regional Input-Output tables. In recent years his research concerning tourism has concentrated on measuring regional enterprise demography and labour market structures in the tourism industries.

Dr. Salvador Anton Clavé
 
Professor 
Rovira i Virgili University, Catalonia, Spain

Salvador Anton Clavé is a Full Professor of Regional Geographical Analysis at the Rovira i Virgili University. He is currently serving as Dean of the Faculty of Tourism and Geography. He is the General Director of the Science and Technology Park for Tourism and Leisure and of the Tourism Observatory of the Costa Daurada tourist region in Catalonia. He has been a visiting researcher at the Universities of Exeter and Nottingham in United Kingdom, the George Washington University and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in the United States of America and Paris-Est in France. His research concentrates on analysing the evolution and restructuring of coastal tourist destinations, local and regional tourism planning, tourism and local development and the impact and effects of leisure facilities such as theme parks and resorts. Among his most relevant publications are several books including The Global Theme Park Industry (2007) and, in collaboration, A propósito del turismo. La construcción social del espacio turístico (2007), Análisis territorial del turismo y planificación de destinos turísticos (2011) and, as editor, 10 lessons on tourism. The challenge of reinventing destinations (2012).

Dr. Oriol Miralbell 
Professor in the department of Business and Economics of the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona.

Oriol holds a PhD from the IN3 – Internet interdisciplinary Institute of the UOC in Information and Knowledge Society, a Master´s Degree in Information Resources Management from Syracuse University (NY) and a Master Degree in Tourism Management from ESADE. He is also associate professor in the University School of Tourism and Hospitality Management of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. Oriol has been Chief of Information Systems at the General Direction for Tourism in the Autonomous Government of Catalonia. He has been advisor of the Ministry of Science and Innovation for the evaluation of R+D National Plan and technical advisor of the European Network of Wine Regions in the creation of the European Council of Wine Routes. Oriol is currently president of the Spanish Chapter of the IFITT – International Federation for IT and Travel and Tourism.

Dr. Gustavo Javier Canavire Bacarreza 
Director for the Center for Research on Economics and Finance at the School of Economics and Finance in Universidad EAFIT in Medellin, Colombia. 

Previously, he was a Research Associate at the International Center for Public Policy in the Department of Economics at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He received a PhD in Economics and a MA in Economics from Georgia State University and got an Advanced Studies Degree from the Kiel Institute for World Economics at Kiel University in Germany. Prior to this he got his degree of Licenciatura from the Universidad Catolica Boliviana. 

His main research interests are development, poverty and inequality, labor markets public finance and applied econometrics. He is research affiliate at IZA in Germany and Universidad Catolica Boliviana. ​

Dr. Metin Kozak 
Professor of Marketing in the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey

Graduated from the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Cukurova University, Turkey, he obtained his Master's degree in tourism management from Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey. He holds a PhD in tourism from Sheffield Hallam University, UK. His main research interests are consumer behavior, benchmarking, cross-cultural research, destination management and marketing, and European tourist markets.
Metin has published over 70 papers and presented over 60 papers at various international conferences held in a wide range of countries. He is the author and the editor of several books. Over the past 12 years, Metin has been involved in the editorial team of Anatolia where he is now acting as an editor-in-chief (www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rana). He is currently an editorial board member of over 25 journals including Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Analysis, Tourism Recreation Research, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing and so on. In addition, he has served as an ad-hoc reviewer for many other tourism, hospitality and leisure journals.
Metin has received two awards to mark his achievements. In 2001, his PhD dissertation on benchmarking was nominated, by the EFQM- EU, among the best three PhD studies on TQM completed in any European institution in 2000/2001. In 2004, by a committee of the Turkish Tourism Investors' Association, he was awarded the grand prize of the tourism researcher of the year 2003 in Turkey.
As of July 2013, his works have received over 750 citations in ISI-referenced journals. Recently, Metin was ranked among the top 25 prolific tourism researchers in terms of the number of publications from 1985 to 2004 (Zhao & Ricthie, 2007) and from 2000 to 2009 (Park, Phillips, Cantr & Abbott, 2011). He was also ranked among the top 50 prolific scholars in terms of the frequency of cited articles (McKercher, 2008).

Dr. Juan Felipe Mejía Mejía
Dean
School of Economics and Finance Universidad EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia 

Dr. Juan-Felipe Mejia obtained a B.A. in Finance and International Relations at the Universidad Externado de Colombia in Bogotá, and continued with his studies, graduating as a Master in Advanced European Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He completed his Doctorate in Economics at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany.
Dr. Mejia is currently the Dean of the School of Economics and Finance at Universidad EAFIT in Colombia. Previously, he occupied different administrative positions at that same university: Head of the Economics Department, Director of the Master in Business Administration (MBA) Program and Coordinator of the Major in International Relations at the Department of International Business. Parallel to his administrative work, Dr. Mejia is Associate Professor of International Economics and Research Associate with the Center for Research on Economics and Finance at Universidad EAFIT. His research and teaching interests are related to the fields of international trade, economic growth, economic development, economic integration, innovation, and competitiveness. He is the author of the book Export Diversification and Economic Growth: An Analysis of Colombia's Export Competitiveness in the European Union's Market, published by Springer (2011) and co-authored the book Sustainable Development – The New Paradigm in Economics (in German), published by Metropolis Verlag in 2010. His columns and articles have appeared in Colombian newspapers including Portafolio, Dinero and El Colombiano.
Prior to joining EAFIT, Dr. Mejia worked for several years in the private and public sector. He was Senior Analyst within the Strategic Planning Division at CORFINSURA, (Corporación Financiera Nacional y Suramericana) , a financial company that forms part of Colombia's largest commercial bank, Bancolombia. Between 1997 and 2000, Dr. Mejia worked at F. Hoffmann La Roche Ltd., first at the group headquarters in Basel (Switzerland), and then as Financial Controller in the Colombian subsidiary in Bogotá. He served as the Academic Director of COLFUTURO, a Colombian non-profit foundation established in 1991 with the support of the national government and some of the most important companies of the Colombian private sector and Executive Director of FUNDEXCOL (Foundation for the Development of the Universidad Externado de Colombia). In 1996, he occupied the position of Professional attached to the Foreign Investment Division at the National Planning Department in Bogotá.

Mr. Sebastian Aparicio 
Administrative Director and Researcher for the Economic Center for Simulation and Modeling –ECSIM- and Lecturer for Department of Economics in Universidad EAFIT in Medellin, Colombia.

He received an M.Sc in Economics from EAFIT University and a B.Sc in Economics from University of Antioquia. His main research interests are economic development, economic growth, economics and business, entrepreneurial activity, applied econometrics and system dynamics.​

Mr. Ulf Sonntag 
Head of market research and associate director at NIT, Institute for Tourism Research in Northern Europe, Kiel, Germany.

He studied Geography, Political Science and Business Administration at the University of Bonn, with international semesters in the USA and Switzerland.
The general focus of Ulf's work is understanding the dynamics of tourism on different spatial levels (regional, national, international) based on statistical analyses and market research as well as the application and discussion of findings in planning and marketing. 
Ulf is project manager of the German Reiseanalyse and in this position provider and advisor concerning tourism demand data for tourism destinations and tour operators. He is also Project Manager of BASTIS, the Baltic Sea Heritage Tourism Information System, a collaborative tourism observatory based on the same open source technology as Wikipedia.