TOMTE 
The Competence Centre in Tourism Management and Tourism Economics 
Scientific coordinator: Oswin Maurer

Members (since 2008): Serena Volo, Linda Osti, Guenter Schamel, Stefan Schubert
(since 2012): Oksana Tokarchuk, Teresio Poggio


The Competence Centre in Tourism Management and Tourism Economics was founded in 2008 and regroups researchers based at the FUB and in other institutions that work on various aspects of the sector of tourism and published in international journals.

TOMTE organises several seminars and workshops every year, including the Consumer Behaviour in Tourism Symposium (CBTS) which takes place every year since 2008 in the month of December in Brunico.

TOMTE has developed an extensive international network and activities, further improving and fostering its reputation in Europe and overseas. Major activities include work on research projects, the development of new projects, publication activities, community service in terms of advice and liaison, the organisation of workshops and international conferences, as well as planning and delivering major research related events in the last four years.

TOMTE is managed by Prof.es Oswin Maurer and Michael Bosnjak, it involves four more researchers from the School as well as a network of colleagues world-wide, and it is guided by an international advisory board of highly reputed scholars from Europe, the US, Australia, and Argentina.

TOMTE is mainly self-funded. It generates its operating budgets from competitive research project funding, the organisation of conferences, symposia, events, and advisory work for industry. The Free University of Bozen-Bolzano has also financially supported the competence centre by having made funds available for CBTS from 2008 to 2011, as well as providing secretarial support for the organisation of events as an in kind contribution. Some smaller amounts have also been drawn from sponsorship activities of local companies. As of November 2012, two large and externally funded research projects with a total funding of € 695,000 are carried out by two teams in TOMTE.

TOMTE members have published extensively in international journals such as Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Analysis, Tourism Economics, Tourism Management, International Journal of Tourism Research, International Journal of Leisure and Tourism Marketing, TOURISMOS: An International Multidisciplinary Journal of Tourism, Journal of Wine Economics, Journal of Vacation Marketing, Social Science Computer Review, etc.

The output achieved by TOMTE (2008-11) includes 53 reviewed papers in international journals, with another 17 papers under review or in print, 4 guest editorships of special issues of highly reputed international journals, 3 books, 7 book chapters, 19 invited and 31 contributed papers at international conferences, as well as 17 industry presentations given under the TOMTE brand during that time period.