UWIC Hosts Tourism Conference

The conference co-chairs were Dr Annette Pritchard and Professor Nigel Morgan both from the Welsh Centre for Tourism Research, Dr Irena Ateljevic of Wageningen University and Dr Candice Harris of Auckland University of Technology.

Dr Pritchard, Director of the Welsh Centre for Tourism Research said: “This was the second time we have held this event in Croatia and it has been a huge success once again. In fact, this is third major international conference our Centre has hosted in five years and we’re alreadly thinking ahead to 2009."

“The event brought together just under 100 scholars from over 20 countries to discuss tourism’s role as a powerful force in the transformation of places and cultures, tourism and social exclusion and tourism development, community and empowerment.”

Papers from the conference will be published in four journal special issues as well as an edited book provisionally entitled Personal, political and emotional research journeys: Voices from the tourism academy.

The conference was opened with a keynote address by Marc Luycks Ghisi, Dean of the Cotrugli Business Academy in Zagreb, Croatia and former director of the Forward Studies Unit in the European Commission where he advised the President of the Commission on business ethics and new cultural shifts. The other keynote speakers were Professors Soile Veijola of the Faculty of Business and Tourism in the University of Lapland, John Tribe from the School of Management in the University of Surrey and Keith Hollinshead of the tourism department in the University of Bedfordshire’s Business School.

Dr Pritchard continued: “A key aim of the conference was also to create new networks to support emerging tourism researchers and we’re delighted that so many doctoral students were there to present their work, including several from our own large research degree community here in the Cardiff School of Management where we have almost 40 registrations in the areas of tourism, hospitality and leisure, making us one of the top three centres in the UK in our field.”

A further outcome of the conference was the establishment of a new body, the Critical Tourism Studies network (CTSN) in which UWIC staff will play a key role as Dr Pritchard and Professor Nigel Morgan will both be members of the Executive.

The conference was sponsored by the Cardiff School of Management, UWIC, the Socio-Spatial Analysis Group, Wageningen University, the Institute for Tourism, Zagreb, Croatia, the Tourist Boards of Split & Dalmatia,  Routledge and Elsevier Publishers and the Centre for Work and Labour Market Studies, Auckland University of Technology.