Using digital tech to drive tourism and hospitality forward

Professor Marianna Sigala grew up with a family in hospitality. Today, she’s an award-winning academic, leading research and teaching practices around the globe on her mission to improve the industry's performance and outcomes.

Marianna specialises in digital technologies and their applications and impacts in tourism and hospitality.

Put simply, she conducts research that can help tourism professionals and policymakers effectively use digital technologies to improve their performance and competitiveness, as well as the quality of life of guests and other stakeholders.

Marianna is keen to point out that this work is not and should not always be about economic profit and competitiveness.

“Digital applications create so many challenges from a socio-cultural, environmental and political perspective; they have so many privacy, psychological (wellbeing), security, legal, and moral implications.”

That’s why, through her research, she always strives to look at the holistic view and impacts of technologies, not just the economic side.

From social media to sustainability

One example of the type of work Marianna does is helping tourism and destination marketers refine their social media strategies by analysing how tourists are attracted to and influenced by online content.

Another is looking at how destination managers can use technologies to monitor and measure the impacts of tourism to make decisions about sustainable destination management and management of tourism flows.

This work includes looking at things like the sectoral and geographical spread of tourism spending, the public sentiment of tourism activity, waste management and traffic.

She also conducts a lot of research in the area of experience design in tourism, specifically in wine tourism with a current focus on the use of culture, heritage and art aiming to build synergies between tourism and the creative sectors.

A deep industry understanding

Marianna’s passion for hospitality runs deep. Born into a family with a long tradition in the hotel business, she grew up working in the industry.

Her academic career, which includes a Master of Science, a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Analysis, and a PhD, has taken her around the world as she continues to teach and conduct research in the field.

Because of her background, Marianna has a deep understanding and a broad perspective on the world of hospitality and how technology impacts it.

"Technologies evolve quickly," she explains, "and they heavily influence the transformation of both the hospitality industry and consumer behaviour."

Because of this, she aims to stay contemporary, in connection with industry and society to produce research and teaching that can have a real-world impact and social value creation.

This means she is continually updating and upgrading her teaching methods (for example, the use of technology, AI, and gamification) her teaching content, as well as her research methods and topics.

Impacting teaching, policy and practice

In 2008, Marianna launched an initiative, including a competition and an academic journal, focused on using case studies to teach tourism and hospitality.

“I pitched the idea to ICHRIE in the US, who accepted, and a university sponsored the competition awards. I ran the ICHRIE Case Study competition for about 10 years and founded the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Cases.”

Her efforts filled a gap, as few case studies were available for teaching until then. This initiative became widely adopted by other academics and associations.

In Australia, Marianna collaborated with CAUTHE to produce two case study books and run workshops to train academics in using case studies for teaching. Now, publishers like Emerald and Springer regularly publish case studies in this field, enriching global education.

Marianna has also collaborated with professionals to develop and implement EU projects with real-world impacts.

In the early 2010s, she secured funding from Greece’s E-Business Forum to research destination management and big data in tourism, influencing policy and legislation on the roles of DMOs and tourism observatories in the country.

Additionally, she’s worked with the Council of Europe to apply her research on digital technologies to the digitisation of cultural heritage and helped promote wine tourism as a tool for regional development in Eastern Europe, including Armenia.

Leading a ‘living lab’ hotel

Marianna is currently the Director of the recently established International Hotel School at the University of Newcastle.

The tourism industry has been identified as one of Australia’s ‘high growth’ industries and has a current labour shortage, with a record 423,500 positions unfilled across tourism, hospitality and events.

The school, which opened to students in 2023, is the next stage to addressing these labour shortages that plague the tourism sector in the region and beyond.

The Bachelor of Tourism, Hospitality and Events provides students with a cutting-edge learning experience that is both academically rigorous and industry-relevant.

“The hotel school is a living lab that serves tourism, benefits the community and showcases the best of the Hunter region,” says Marianna.

“It offers world-class experiential learning environments and acts as a co-creation platform bringing together industry, researchers and community to experiment, test and deliver innovations with real-world social impact.”

The mutual benefits of WIL

Marianna strongly believes in work integrated learning (WIL) and the mutual benefits it can provide to students and businesses alike.

“I use various methods of WIL, including back-of-house tours and field trips in the industry, industry-invited speakers, industry-defined course assignments, student placements and internships.”

“All these practices help and support students to produce course-related work that answers real industry problems. It also helps the industry source ideas and insights from student work to solve industry problems and/or obtain market and business intelligence.”

She had established collaborations and partnerships for the above with many industry associations and industry professionals.

These include destination management organisations (DMOs), hotels, restaurants, tour companies, experience providers, event organisers, the Hellenic Chamber of Hoteliers, and the Association of Tourism Enterprise.

A decorated hospitality academic

Over the years, Marianna has won multiple academic honours and awards.

Some of her most recent include Winner of Public Voting for the Wine Travel Awards 2024 in the category ‘Author of the Year’ following on from being an Award Winner in the same category in 2023.

In 2021, a book she chaptered (Wine Tourism in Australia) received the PRIX de l’OIV 2021 (OIV AWARD 2021) in the category Économie Vitivinicole – Vitivinicultural Economy.

Her paper Tourism and COVID-19: impacts and Implications for advancing and resetting industry and research in the Journal of Business Research also ranked 14 out of the 20 papers listed in Shugan’s Top 20 Marketing Meta Journal (2021).

Additionally, Marianna was included in the top 2 per cent of scientists (professors) in the world in a Stanford study, ranked 32 within the top 2 per cent of professors in the scientific field of tourism, leisure and sports.

She’s also an internationally sought keynote speaker at many academic and industry conferences. To date, she’s delivered more than 200 keynotes all over the globe.

Inspiring others in the field

Marianna is proud of the recognition and impact she’s achieved to date.

“It’s a great feeling when other researchers cite my work, when my presentations inspire other people to conduct research and when other researchers around the globe approach me for collaborations and see me as a global expert in my field.”

The need to keep abreast of change and use technologies to create and lead positive shifts in the industry are what fascinate and trigger her to keep up her research.