John Kent student wins top PhD prize at Enter 2011

Date: 28 January 2011

John Kent student Zornitza Yovcheva with Institute Director Professor Dimitrios Buhalis

A student from the John Kent Institute in Tourism has won the top award at this year's prestigious Enter 2011 PhD Research Workshop.

Zornitza Yovcheva won First PhD Prize for her current research into three-dimensional mobile, context-aware applications for tourism at the international etourism conference held in Innsbruck, Austria.

John Fotis, who is also a PhD student and a part time lecturer in the School of Tourism, was awarded the Third PhD Prize for his ongoing research into the impact of social media on consumer behaviour.

The annual PhD Research Workshop was attended by doctoral students from all over the world who are undertaking research in information and communication technology in the tourism industry. The workshop is part of Enter 2011, which is organised by the International Federation for Information Technology and Travel & Tourism (IFITT).

Zornitza said: "I feel truly honoured to receive this award by the IFITT, the leading eTourism community of the world, and to be a part of such a vibrant community of tourism and technology researchers!"

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis, who is the Director of the John Kent Institute and Zornitza's PhD supervisor, said: "I am very proud of Zornitza's award and also of John for winning the third place prize. This demonstrates the cutting edge etourism research that is being undertaken at BU and the innovations that our team are working on."

View Zornitza's PhD research poster for Enter 2011, which is about finding ways to improve the usability of context-aware, three-dimensional mobile map-based applications for urban tourism.

View John's research poster about his PhD, which aims to develop a comprehensive framework / model describing the impact of social media on the purchase decision making process.