Review: The guest lectures of A/Prof Michael Volgger

Dr Michael Volgger is an Associate Professor at the School of Management and Marketing at Curtin University in Perth, Australia and Co-Director of the Curtin Tourism Research Cluster (TRC). He received his PhD from the Faculty of Economics at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and worked as a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Regional Development, Eurac Research. His research fields include product development and innovation in tourism, destination governance, sustainable consumption and the sharing economy.

Michael Volgger gave his first lecture on "Contemporary research on the sharing economy” in the Seminar “Innovation and product development in tourism: Current theory and practice at the example of Sharing Economy, China Outbound Tourism, Boutique Hotels and Experience Design”. Starting with the relevance of segmentation and positioning, Michael gave insights into the Airbnb Business Model. Thereby he focused on the shifts of the platform and its marketing, from “living like a local”(2016), “live there with your family” (2017), towards “That’s why we Airbnb” (2019) and “made possible by hosts’ (2021). Michael supported those shifts by including empirical evidence from Australia and interesting case studies.

His second guest lecture was in the course “Theory and Strategy of Destination Management and Marketing” and focused on the topic of “Atmospheric turn in tourism and hospitality”. After a first general introduction into the topics of atmosphere and servicescape, Michael then explained their impacts on human behaviors, and tourist behavior in specific. Subsequently, he took on the perspective of destination managers and presented opportunities for atmospheric interventions. Aside from research on atmospheres, a key topic was the design of behavioral incentives.

The digital international visiting professor program is funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts.