Ted Rogers School researchers take home award at travel and tourism conference

Congratulations to Michelle Novotny, Dr. Rachel Dodds and Dr. Phil Walsh for winning the Best Research Paper Award at the international Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) Conference.

The 52nd annual conference, held in Victoria, British Columbia from June 13 to 16, 2022, had the theme “Regenerative Tourism: Building Resilience.” It focused 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.

Novotny (Master of Science and Management student and Hospitality and Tourism Management graduate), Dr. Dodds (Professor, HTM) and Dr. Walsh (Professor, Entrepreneurship & Strategy) won the Best Research Paper Award at the conference for their paper called “Developing a Scalable Data-Driven Decision-Making Tool for Smart Destination Management.”

In addition to this group, several other Ted Rogers School HTM researchers and alumni presented at this year’s conference:

• MScM student and HTM graduate Natasha Francis presented a paper co-authored with Dr. Tom Griffin and Dr. Walter Jamieson
• Dr. Wayne W. Smith presented a paper co-authored with Dr. Frederic Dimanche
• Dr. Dodds contributed to a session on the future of cruise tourism
• Alumnus Mark Holmes ('07) presented a paper
• Alumna Kelly Galaski ('01), a sustainable tourism specialist at The Travel Foundation, presented in a session about re-defining and re-measuring the indicators of tourism success

Ted Rogers School’s success and representation at the TTRA conference is another example of the HTM program’s growing research reputation. Early this year, the program was ranked #1 in Canada and #7 in the world in the prestigious QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022 in the Hospitality Leisure Management subject area’s “citations per paper” index. It was also listed among the Top 100 worldwide in the 2021 Shanghai Ranking of academic subjects, and placed second in Canada for its overall rank and citation performance of the journal articles.