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Emerging Leader Rising Star Award Winner

IAN CENTRONE
Tourism Program Manager for the Martin County Office of Tourism and Marketing

The Rising Star Award is presented to an emerging leader (formerly known as a young professional) employed in the travel and tourism industry. TTRA wishes to recognize this person for commitment to increasing his/her expertise in the industry, demonstrated leadership abilities, and outstanding accomplishments that have added value to travel and tourism.

Ian Centrone currently serves as the Tourism Program Manager for the Martin County Office of Tourism and Marketing. He is responsible for managing award-winning marketing programs with a focus on public relations, digital media strategies, and industry relations to stimulate the growth of Martin County’s tourism industry. Prior to this role, Ian worked as a freelance travel writer and photographer, contributing to print and digital publications such as Travel + Leisure, National Geographic, Esquire, Men’s Journal, Hemispheres, Fodor’s, and more. He also co-authored “Sustainable Escapes, a curated guide book published by Lonely Planet featuring the world’s leading low-impact properties and experiences. His previous experience includes various communications and marketing roles at Saatchi & Saatchi, NBCUniversal, and Hawkins International Public Relations. A native New Yorker, Ian spent his high school years in Martin County and earned his B.S. in advertising and communications studies from the University of Florida and Digital Marketing Certificate from Cornell University.  CONGRATULATIONS IAN!

Call For Research Papers

Call For Papers – 52nd Annual Travel and Tourism Research Association International Conference

14-16 June 2022, Victoria, Canada. Abstract Submission Deadline: 15 January 2022

The Academic Co-Chairs of the 52nd TTRA Annual Conference, Drs. Svetlana Stepchenkova, Kevin Kam Fung So, and Eugene Thomlinson invite paper submissions from travel and tourism researchers. The conference theme is Regenerative Tourism: Building Resilience. The conference will focus on recovering efforts of the global tourism and hospitality industry and communities to regenerate tourism in the post-pandemic era and at the same time to increase resilience to crises, sustain resources, and distribute more fairly tourism benefits.

Currently, TTRA plans to conduct the conference in a hybrid model, including physical presence and virtual presentation and attendance. A traditional Graduate Student Colloquium will be held online, and Ph.D. students can select to participate in the conference virtually at a reduced rate.  

The TTRA 2021  Uncharted Territory: Reimagining Tourism in a New Era conference at Fort Worth and our research community’s need to address the regenerative travel and tourism post-pandemic helped shape priority areas for the 2022 TTRA conference. Conceptual, quantitative, qualitative, mixed-method, and state-of-the-art papers, as well as data-intensive studies, are invited to address the sub-themes below. Additionally, we welcome submissions that explore lessons learned and contemporary trends in travel and tourism research.

  • The Regenerative Tourism
    • Recovering economic indicators impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic
    • Rebuilding tourism on more equitable grounds: unpacking issues of representation, equity, diversity, and inclusion in the tourism industry
    • Addressing future challenges of climate change, overtourism, disasters, disease outbreaks, etc.
    • New ways to travel: virtual and augmented reality
  • Community Resilience
    • Tourism, participation, self-reliance, and social justice
    • Adaptation to economic, social, and political changes
    • Addressing human resources crisis: workforce development policies for the future
  • Remeasuring Success in Tourism
    • Issues concerning distribution of benefits from tourism across communities. Going beyond key performance indicators and including residents’ perceptions, both survey-based and holistic accounts
    • Balancing short-term tactics with long-term strategic vision
  • Tourism, Happiness, Health, and Wellness
    • People-centered tourism: Indigenous people and the control of identity, culture, heritage, land, governance, and future
    • Marketing and promoting tourism for a better world
  • COVID-19 Lessons
    • Crises responses and innovative practices 
    • Recovery strategies and emerging opportunities in the new era
  • Focusing on Data Influenced Decisions to Regenerate Tourism and Build Resilience
    • Data intensive research: datamining, machine-learning, network analysis, and artificial intelligence
    • Consumer neuroscience and neuromarketing
    • Using and interpreting “Big Data”

At TTRA 2022, the program will include both traditional Oral Presentation sessions and the popular Ideas Fair. In the Ideas Fair interactive session, academics and practitioners meet as expert innovators in their field to engage in immersive and interactive multimedia presentations. We will also feature the dynamic and constructive Qualitative Research Workshop and Graduate Student Colloquium (both fully online). Hospitality and tourism practitioners are invited to submit proposals for industry round-table sessions focusing on pertinent issues facing the industry, both strategic and tactical, via email: [email protected], attention of Esra Calvert.

For the Oral Presentation sessions, Ideas Fair, and Qualitative Research Workshop we invite submissions of Extended Abstracts (3,000 words max). For the Graduate Student Colloquium, the length of the submission should not exceed 1,500 words. Authors of Extended Abstracts accepted for the Oral Presentation sessions may convert their submission to the Full Paper format (5,000 words max) to compete for the Best Paper Award. In the Ideas Fair category, the Best Ideas Fair Extended Abstract will also be recognized. Authors will be able to choose a publication format for the online Conference Proceedings: Full Paper, Extended Abstract, or Short Abstract (150 words). 

Submissions are now open. Key Dates:

  • 15 January 2022. Submission of Extended Abstract due
  • 15 March 2022. Notification of acceptance
  • 15 April 2022. Submission of Full Paper or revised Extended Abstract  

For Author Guidelines, Submission Templates and to submit your abstract, please visit https://scholarworks.umass.edu/ttra/. For more information on the TTRA Conference, check our website ttra.com/conference/, and/or email us at [email protected].

We are looking forward to a great conference! 

Sincerely,

Svetlana Stepchenkova, University of Florida, [email protected] 
Kevin Kam Fung So, Oklahoma State University, [email protected]  
Eugene Thomlinson, Royal Road University, [email protected] 

Sharing Research with Stakeholders

Presenting digestible information to your board is important. A good pitch can be the difference between getting buy-in for a new project or losing support. So where should you begin when preparing for your next meeting? Here are a few tips to get you started.

Preparing pitches to your board – how to share your talking points in a digestible manner.

Before you begin:

  • Determine what questions you want answered. This will determine the data you will collect.
  • Know your audience. How much information are they already aware of and who is in the audience? If your audience is media relations, journalists and the press, you want to stick to five strong indicators and get ahead of questions. With your stakeholders you can include more research and go over data points quicker because your audience is more familiar with what you are presenting.

1.When developing the presentation – set the stage.

  • Give your data a story
  • Set the context of the current situation to show comparisons with your findings
  • What data is relevant to your board? What are your metrics? Highlight these and then provide interesting or surprising results at the end.
  • Go over the methodology but stick to bullet points and high-level information. Going too deep into methodology can sometimes only lead to more questions.

2.Dissect factors that lead to your conclusions.

  • YOU know your board. How will they react to what you are showing them?  Prepare to answer their questions by answering them while presenting.
  • Lay out your findings in 3-5 bullet points. Put the summary of findings front and center, so they are easily discovered.

3.End with looking ahead – cover the game changers that affect your forecast.

  • Example: “We are looking forward to a good travel season but factors that could change this are: gas prices, traveler sentiment, etc.”
  • Go over any positive or negative exponentials that you foresee. This will help set the stage for your next meeting.

Other tips:

Infographics are popular but can be difficult to understand. Stick to basic charts. They are easy to understand by everyone.

Any research/data that you already have, make sure they continually see you using it. If you ask for more research, they will ask what you are doing with data already acquired. Always point to your data when decision making is happening.

Digital Commons Readership for September 2021

Last month, Travel and Tourism Research Association had 11682 full-text downloads to the [email protected] Amherst Digital Commons Dashboard.

The most popular papers were: 

To learn more about usage reports available from Digital Commons, see: https://www.bepress.com/reference_guide_dc/overview-digital-commons-reports/

Digital Commons is a best-in-class hosted solution to openly publish, manage and showcase the full spectrum of your institution’s research and scholarship. Built for discovery, our cloud-hosted institutional repository software features a professional-grade publishing platform for journals, conference proceedings, open educational resources, books, campus newsletters, and magazines. 

Nearly 600 institutions – and growing – use Digital Commons to preserve and promote their intellectual output and expertise.


David Williams inducted into the Utah Tourism Hall of Fame

TTRA member David Williams is a 2021 inductee into the Utah Tourism Hall of Fame.

David has been an active member of the Travel and Tourism Research Association for well over a decade and has regularly attended our Annual International Research Conference. His aptitude is well noted as our sessions and discussions at our Annual Conference are filled with the leading tourism academics, tourism researchers, and global marketers from the premier domestic and international destinations.

As a servant leader, David is president of our Greater Western Chapter and has represented his chapter as its liaison to our International Board.

His contributions to Utah’s tourism industry cannot be denied. He has been at the forefront of implementing a new funding plan for Utah tourism and has been actively involved in advocating for the formula to industry partners.

The Utah Tourism Hall of Fame is presented by the Utah Office of Tourism and the Utah Tourism Industry Association. Recipients are nominated by their peers and selected annually for contributions made to Utah’s tourism industry at the state, regional, or local levels. The Hall of Fame was first introduced in 1985 and has recognized 118 individuals who have elevated life in Utah through their leadership in tourism marketing, stewardship, and destination management.

Congratulations David!

Founded in 1970, the Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) is a non-profit association whose purpose is to enhance the quality, value, effectiveness, and use of research in travel marketing, planning, and development. Our Association strives to be a leader for the global community of practitioners and educators engaged in research, information management, and marketing in the travel, tourism, and hospitality industries. TTRA creates business opportunities for our members and provides a unique multi-sector industry network. Members in TTRA represent a variety of segments from the greater international travel and tourism community, including educators, practitioners, research providers/consultants and users of research. For additional information please visit www.ttra.com or telephone 248-708-8872