Melanie Kay Smith (PhD) is a Lecturer and Researcher in the Department of Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality at the Budapest Metropolitan University of Applied Sciencesin Hungary where she specialises in cultural tourism and health tourism.
She has worked for over fifteen years as a Tourism academic in both London and Budapest. She has been the Director of BA and MA programmes, has undertaken extensive curriculum development, organised, hosted or chaired several conferences and events, and has more than fifty academic publications.
She has been an invited Keynote Speaker at many international conferences, and has undertaken consultancy work in a range of countries, including for ETC and UNWTO. She was also Chair of ATLAS (the Association for Tourism and Leisure Education) for seven years, a network through which she made numerous contacts in more than 75 countries.

ISCONTOUR was founded in 2013 by the two professors Christian Maurer (IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems) and Roman Egger (Salzburg University of Applied Sciences) in order to provide a platform where students and graduates of Bachelor and Master degree programmes can submit and present to the public their tourism-related research papers based on their approved BA- or MA-theses. ISCONTOUR, which takes place alternately at the venues of Salzburg UAS and IMC UAS Krems, aims to establish aplatform of knowledge transfer and networking for students, graduates, professors, researchers and practitioners working in the tourism industry.

Students and Graduates are cordially invited to submit their research paper to the 4th International Student Conference in Tourism Research.

Research papers are invited from the widest spectrum of the below mentioned topics by students and graduates of Bachelor-, Master and Doctoral Degree programmes. Submitted papers must be based on approved Bachelor- or Master-Theses which were submitted between 2013 and 2015, or papers which have been written and approved in Master-Classes (also between 2013 and 2015).

Topics to be covered at the conference include but are not limited to:

Marketing and Management
Tourism Product Development & Sustainability
Information and Communication Technologies
Financing and Budgeting
Human Resource Management

The conference aims to offer students and graduates a unique platform to present their research and to establish a mutual knowledge transfer and networking forum for attendees from academia, industry, government and other organisations.

Daftar Isi

Testimonials

Stefanie Bohacek, best-ICT-related paper award winner, summarises her ISCONTOUR 2015 experience: „If you would have asked me half a year ago if I could imagine an academic career I would have most probably answered with ‘I don’t know.’ However, when my research paper got accepted by the ISCONTOUR committee and especially when it received the Best ICT Paper Award I realized that there might be an undiscovered strength and passion in me for research work. Now, that I could present my study – on which I spent a large amount of hours time and energy – I begun to understand how good it feels to talk about something that YOU created.”

The targeted audiences include international students, graduates, teachers and lecturers from the field of tourism and leisure management as well as companies and anyone interested in the conference topic areas.

Senior Lecturer Dr Margit Kastner (Vienna University of Economics and Business), member of ISCONTOUR scientific committee, explains why professors and supervisors should encourage students to submit their research and participate in ISCONTOUR: “As a supervisor of many BA- and MA-theses I have often witnessed outstanding work of students left to collect dust. Innovative and useful work often is read by myself as the examiner only, which is a real shame. For this reason, I support the ISCONTOUR and also encourage my students to share the essence of their research with the world by submitting a paper to this conference. Students perceive it as a rewarding experience and a great opportunity to learn and to obtain interesting and valuable feedback on their research from reviewers as well as the crowd at the conference. Additional incentives to participate are the chance to listen to inspiring speakers, to engage in research workshops, and to network.”

Jointly organised by the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences and IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, the ISCONTOUR 2016 will take place at the IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria.

Important Dates:

Paper submission deadline: 31 January 2016 (extended)
Reviewers feedback: 14 February 2016
Final paper submission: 15 March 2016

Early bird registration closes: 30 March 2016
Conference registration closes: 16 May 2016
Conference: 23–24 May 2016

The best three submitted papers in various categories will be awarded!

Best ISCONTOUR 2016 Research Paper
Best ISCONTOUR 2016 ICT-related Research Paper (sponsored by IFITT)
Best ISCONTOUR 2016 MICE-related Research Paper (sponsored by Salzburg Congress)

The awardees of the best three research papers will be rewarded during the conference.