Alberto Michele Felicetti

Tourism Breeding Environment: Forms and Levels of Collaboration in the Tourism Sector

Tourism, one of the largest industries in the world, has been subject to strong innovation in the last years. Main changes are due to the availability of new Information and Communication Technologies, which directly connect tourists among them and with service providers, and to the always more personalized supply of tourism experience. Such evolution may represent a driver of development for local communities if they are able to reorganize the territorial tourism offer around different pattern of collaboration. In this paper we propose an organizational model for a Tourism Breeding Environment, TBE, whose members are tourism operators of a regional area with tourist vocation. After discussing about which forms of collaborative networked organizations can rise from the TBE, we present a classification of the different levels of collaboration emerging in those forms.

The Potential of Agritourism in Revitalizing Rural Communities: Some Empirical Results

Modern patterns of rural development propose a rational and respectful exploitation of agricultural resources together with the rediscovery of historical and naturalistic heritage as means to reach sustainable development. In this sense, Agritourism represents the contact point between the tourists’ request of wellbeing, genuineness and rediscovery of nature, and the offer of typical agricultural products and touristic services of a network of rural organizations. The aim of this study is to improve our understanding of how agritourism activities can contribute to revitalize rural communities; the study assumes particular importance in a period of economic crisis characterized by the failure of the traditional patterns of rural development. We present key findings of an explorative survey carried out in the Calabria region, Italy, during 2012 on a sample of 52 farms offering agritourism activities. The study deploys an original methodology aimed to highlight the extent of the agritourism phenomena in the selected region and to evaluate how agritourism can support sustainable development of a rural community becoming the hub of an “agritourism rural network”.

Intelligent Food Information Provision to Consumers in an Internet of Food Era

Food information is a crucial tool for facilitating consumers in decision-making activities related to their consumption process. Recent advances in “Internet of food” technologies (such as food sensors, cloud computing, food data analysis, and mobile app technologies) makes possible to conceive new consumer information platforms. The rationale is to empower consumers by letting them get more relevant food information than they usually obtain through on-product labeling, mass media or other traditional channels. In this paper, we envisage a new generation of food information provision services, called intelligent food services (IFSs), which would be responsive to consumer’s expectations and information needs. We outline IFS structure and main features as well as constitutive elements of user-IFS interaction context. Particularly, we focus on food-in-context awareness capability and we discuss its influence on consumer and IFS behaviors.

Identifying Opinion Leaders in Time-Dependent Commercial Social Networks

The increasing amount of information flowing through commercial social networks offers clear advantages for companies who can take a valuable feedback from community actions. In particular, the identification of influential users in on-line social network can support companies in designing and targeting marketing campaigns, as influential gate-keepers and diffusers of information can ignite epidemics through word-of-mouth. In this paper, we model a time-dependent commercial social network as a time-varying weighted directed graph. Moreover, we propose an approach to determine opinion leaders and their contributions to a temporal business value, by taking into account behavioural and structural aspects of the commercial social network.

Competence Mapping through Analysing Research Papers of a Scientific Community

Main goal of a scientific community is the collaborative production of new knowledge through research and scholarship. An integrative research approach, fostered by confrontation and collaboration among researchers, is widely recognized as a key factor to improve the quality of production of a scientific community. Competence mapping is a valid approach to highlight expertise, encourage re-use of knowledge, contributing significantly to the growth of the scientific community. In this paper we propose a methodological framework for examination and semi-manual classification of research papers. This method leads to the creation of a database that correlates research competences and researchers.

Eigenvector Centrality Based on Shared Research Topics in a Scientific Community

In this paper we propose a weighted multi-hypergraph as logical structure to model relationships between researchers and interest groups that join them on the base of shared research topics in a given scientific community. The well known concept of eingenvector centrality for graphs is extended to weighted multi-hypergraphs and we present a model instantiation for centrality analysis in the Pro-VE scientific community.

Tourism Destination Management: A Collaborative Approach

Collaboration is a key factor of sustainable growth across territories and industrial sectors. Tourism, one of the largest industries in the world, has been subject to strongest innovation in the last years. Main reasons of this reside both in the availability of new ICTs - Information and Communication Technologies - and organizational models, which directly connect tourists among them and with service providers, and in the always more personalized supply of tourism experience. Tourism destinations can benefit of such innovations if they are able to reorganize the territorial tourism offer around different pattern of collaboration in order to give 2.0 tourists opportunities to live an augmented tourism experience. This paper deals with the possible forms of collaborative networks that can rise within a destination with a focus on relationships between services delivered by the Tourism Destination and the requests of services at the different phases of the tourist 2.0 lifecycle.

A Framework for Energy-Efficiency in Smart Home Environments

A resource-efficient Europe is a pillar of the EU 2020 program which aims at smart, sustainable, inclusive growth. The diffusion of smart networked environments, wherein humans, intelligent agents and devices collaborate, is fundamental for achieving energy-efficiency in buildings. In this context, this paper deals with the topic of Smart Home Environments (SHEs), where users can exploit multimedia services to interact with heterogeneous and interconnected smart appliances in order to save energy, reduce costs and improve users’ comfort and safety. In particular, we propose an interoperable architectural framework and a related knowledge-based management model, associated with a specific forecasting model, for monitoring and managing energy consumption in SHEs.

Smart Tourism Destinations: Can the Destination Management Organizations Exploit Benefits of the ICTs? Evidences from a Multiple Case Study

Recent developments of ICTs enable new ways to experience tourism and conducted to the concept of smart tourism. The adoption of cutting-edge technologies and its combination with innovative organizational models fosters cooperation, knowledge sharing, and open innovation among service providers in tourism destination. Moreover, it offers innovative services to visitors. In few words, they become smart tourism destinations. In this paper, we report first results of the SMARTCAL project aimed at conceiving a digital platform assisting Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) in providing smart tourism services. A DMO is the organization charged with managing the tourism offer of a collaborative network, made up of service providers acting in a destination. In this paper, we adopted a multiple case studies approach to analyze five Italian DMOs. Our aims were to investigate (1) if, and how, successful DMOs were able to offer smart tourism services to visitors; (2) if the ICTs adoption level was related to the collaboration level among DMO partners. First results highlighted that use of smart technologies was still in an embryonic stage of development, and it did not depend from collaboration levels.

Research Investigation on Food Information User's Behaviour.

Recent advances in smart food technologies have renewed the attractiveness of those studies on human information behaviour that take the food consumer as focus of interest. In this paper, we introduce a reference framework to model the food information usage process and the interrelation between the food consumer’s behaviour and the food information user’s behaviour. Basing on this framework, we present a literature review that classifies research works according to research approach types and stages of the food information usage process. The aim is to present a state of art of significance to food marketing and to the development of food intelligent services with higher satisfaction and value.