DGT-ITB Science Award

Once again, and this time twice, there is good news to report at MCI: MCI alumni Louisa Hendrich, M.A., and Niklas Reitz, M.A. each win the prestigious DGT Science Award in a category. The tourism alumna and the alumna of the 'Entrepreneurship & Tourism' programme at MCI won the coveted award in the categories 'Best Young Researcher' and 'Best Paper on eTourism'. This is the ninth time in a row that the prestigious DGT Science Award has gone to students of the MCI's Entrepreneurship & Tourism program.

Due to the Corona pandemic, the award could not be presented as usual at the International Tourism Exchange (ITB) Berlin, but was presented in mid-November at the DGT Annual Conference in Europapark Rust. Louisa Hendrich convinced the DGT jury with her work "Authentic Tourism: How the (indigenous) Tour Guide impacts perceived authenticity and customer satisfaction", which was supervised by Theresa Mitterer-Leitner. The second prize winner, Niklas Reitz, wrote his Master's thesis on "E-Tourism - Success factors of a tour operator website as an information and distribution channel" and was supervised by Ralph Berchtenbreiter. The two winners thus secured the prize of 1,000 euros.

MCI Tourism thus once again confirms its outstanding role as one of the leading tourism universities in the German-speaking region.

"I am very pleased that we were able to win two categories with excellent Master's theses this year. This once again underpins the high quality of the teaching and the students in the Master's programme "Entrepreneurship & Tourism" at the Entrepreneurial School®," says Prof. Hubert Siller, Head of MCI Tourism.

Theresa Mitterer-Leitner, M.A., is enthusiastic about the award for the thesis she supervised: "Louisa Hendrich's thesis is a valuable contribution to the still growing debate on authenticity in tourism and adds a very interesting and also highly relevant aspect to the state of research with the topic of perceived authenticity of the service provided by tour guides".

Dr. Tanja Hörtnagl-Pozzo, member of the board of the DGT and responsible for young academics: "Both master's theses offer exciting insights into very current tourism topics. In addition, the awarded theses are characterised by a methodically very clean approach and are on a high scientific level."

DGT Science Award The German Society for Tourism Science (DGT e.V.) annually awards the DGT Science Award (traditionally at the ITB) for outstanding theses of tourism studies in the four following categories and was awarded for the 27th time in 2021.

DOWNLOAD IMAGES: