From October 18th to 20th, 2024, the “2024 Frontier in Hospitality and Tourism Annual Research Symposium” was grandly held at Fudan University in Shanghai. This symposium was initiated by the China Tourism Education Cooperation Alliance, hosted by the Department of Tourism of Fudan University, and co-organized by the Department of Integrated Resorts and Tourism Management in the Faculty of Business Administration of the University of Macau, the College of Tourism and Service Management of Nankai University, and the School of Business of Sun YAT-SEN University. The theme of this symposium is “Inheritance and Innovation: The Era Opportunities and Missions of Tourism Discipline Development“, aiming to explore the importance of inheritance and innovation in the tourism field, analyze the era opportunities faced by the tourism discipline in the context of the new era, and the social and cultural missions shouldered in the discipline development.
This year’s symposium attracted more than two hundred faculty and students from dozens of universities at home and abroad to participate in submissions and academic exchanges. This symposium set up multiple sessions such as keynote speeches, themed sub-forums, MTA cultural and tourism innovation research forums, paper poster display and exchanges, and editor-in-chief roundtable forums. Faculty and students from the Department of Integrated Resorts and Tourism Management in the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Macau also actively participated in this symposium.
On the morning of October 19th, in the keynote speech session of the symposium, Professor Li MIAO, the head of the Department of Integrated Resorts and Tourism Management in the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Macau, delivered a keynote speech at this symposium. She shared the past research of her team and elaborated on her own views and opinions on the inheritance and innovation exploration of tourism research in the wave of cultural and tourism integration and digital intelligence. Associate Professor Yuansi HOU and Assistant Professor Soey Sut Ieng LEI participated in this forum as members of the program committee of this session.
Eight sub-forums covering eight themes and two MTA cultural and tourism innovation research sub-forums were held simultaneously in the afternoon. The faculty and students from the Department of Integrated Resorts and Tourism Management in the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Macau actively participated in the academic exchanges and sharing. Among them, Associate Professor Yuansi HOU served as the moderator of a sub-forum, and Assistant Professor Faye Feier CHEN and Assistant Professor Huiling HUANG delivered themed speeches related to the sub-forum on the current hot topics in tourism research. Our master’s students Jing FENG, Sijia FENG and doctoral students Dongming JIANG, Chao LIU, Zichun ZHANG also simultaneously presented their latest research outcomes and delivered themed speeches in various sub-forums. This forum provided a valuable opportunity for the professors and students of the Department of Integrated Resorts and Tourism Management in the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Macau to communicate and discuss with scholars at home and abroad on the frontier topics of tourism research.
In the roundtable forum session, Professor Li MIAO, the head of the Department of Integrated Resorts and Tourism Management in the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Macau, also attended the exchange meeting of Chinese and foreign journal editors as the editor-in-chief of Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, introduced the latest developments and features of the journal and answered questions from the on-site faculty and students about academic career development and paper submission and writing.
At the award ceremony of the symposium, Professor Li MIAO, the head of the Department of Integrated Resorts and Tourism Management in the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Macau, served as a guest for awarding prizes at the symposium. The teams of Assistant Professor Huiling HUANG and master student graduated in 2024 Xinxin YANG, as well as the teams of Assistant Professor Stella Xing LIU and PhD student Zichun ZHANG from our department won the Excellent Conference Paper Award.
