Keynote Speakers

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Professor Babak Taheri

Professor Babak Taheri is a Professor of Marketing at Nottingham Trent University and has held a number academic and research leadership positions in the past. He is also Honorary Professor of Marketing in Business School at University of Aberdeen. He has an established reputation in the marketing field with a specific expertise in services marketing management, consumer behaviour and tourism, leisure and cultural consumption. The innovative nature of his research traces to multi-disciplinary work and to methodologically robust measurement and assessment of key concepts. He has published consistently in internationally rated top-tier journals with high impact factors (over 120 academic publications) and held funds from bodies in the EU and UK such as Horizon 2020 and Innovate UK Research Grant – KTP. Prof. Taheri currently serves as Senior Editor for Tourism Management Perspectives and Associate Editor for: The Service Industries Journal and International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. He also is on the editorial review board of several social science journals, including the Journal of Business Research and Journal of Travel Research.

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Professor Fevzi Okumus

Professor Fevzi Okumus is the Central Florida Hotel and Lodging Association (CFHLA) Preeminent Chair Professor within the Hospitality Services Department at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management. He was the Founding Chair of the Hospitality Services Department at UCF Rosen College. He has over 270 academic publications (over 170 refereed journal articles, three books, 12 book chapters and 90 conference presentations and reports). As of December 21st, 2021, his publications have received over 14500 citations, and he has an h-index of 58. He has chaired/co-chaired and served on numerous PhD dissertation and master thesis committees. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (IJCHM) (IF: 6.514) and the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights (JHTI). He is a frequent speaker at international conferences. He has received numerous prestigious research awards and recognitions including “The Michael D. Olsen Research Award” in 2016; “The University of Central Florida Scroll & Quill Society Award” in 2017, the “CFHLA Preeminent Professor” again in 2017 and the John Wiley & Sons Lifetime Research Achievement Award from ICHRIE in 2018. According to Baas et al. (2021), Prof. Okumus was ranked 58th among all the scholars in the Sport, Leisure & Tourism field globally. Finally, Prof. Okumus was recognized as a “Highly Cited Researcher” for 2021 by Clarivate, based on data from Web of Science. The Highly Cited Researchers rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science™ citation index.

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Associate Professor Michael Volgger

Dr Michael Volgger is an Associate Professor with the School of Management and Marketing at Curtin University in Western Australia where he is Co-Director of the Tourism Research Cluster and the Research Lead of Australia’s South West Sustainable Tourism Observatory. He is also the Research Lead of Curtin University’s Indian Ocean Tourism Research Initiative. Michael is a Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Eichstatt-Ingolstadt (Germany) and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Tourism Research at Wakayama University (Japan) as well as the “Advances in Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research” (ACTHR) Series Co-Editor. Michael holds a doctoral degree in Economics and Business Administration and a master’s degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology. His areas of expertise span questions of transformation and coordination in tourism destination management, regional development, tourism product development and consumer behaviour. Among others, he has published extensively on tourism governance and crisis recovery marketing. Michael’s research has been supported by industry and government through 40 research grants and he has published 80 academic articles, five books and more than 20 industry or government reports.

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Professor Marianna Sigala

Marianna Sigala is Professor at the University of Piraeus, Greece. She previously hold the position of the Professor of Tourism and the Director of the Centre for Tourism & Leisure Management at the University of South Australia (2015 – 2021). She has also been an academic staff at the University of Strathclyde and Westminster University (UK), and the University of the Aegean (Greece). Her academic credentials are combined with her professional experience in the tourism industry. Her interests include services and experience management, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in tourism and hospitality, as well as wine tourism. She is a widely published and multi-awarded authority: nine books, numerous papers in academic journals, and (keynote) presentations in international conferences. She has a long record of leadership and participation in international research projects funded by various entities such as the E.U., the Council of Europe and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia. She is a past President of EuroCHRIE and a past member of the executive board of ICHRIE and IFITT. She currently serves at the executive board of CAUTHE. She is the co-editor of the Journal of Service Theory & Practice, and the Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Management. In 2016, she has been awarded the prestigious EuroCHRIE Presidents’ Award for her lifetime contributions and achievements to tourism and hospitality education. Since 2020, Professor Sigala is also appointed as Research Fellow of CAUTHE.

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Professor Justin Paul

Dr Justin Paul, serves as Editor-in-chief of A ranked International Journal of Consumer studies (Cite score 7.0, IF 3.9, Expected IF for 2021- 7.0), and as an Associate Editor of Journal of Business Research. A former faculty member with the University of Washington, he serves as Full Professor of PhD & MBA programs, University of Puerto Rico, USA and holds concurrent appointment at Henley Business school, University of Reading, England for 3 years. He holds three honorary titles as 'Distinguished Professor' with three reputed universities including- Indian Institute of Management (IIM-K), SIBM, Pune & MS University. He is known as an author/co-author of books such as Business Environment (4th ed), International Marketing, Services Marketing, Export-Import Management (2nd edition), Management of Banking & Financial Services by McGraw-Hill, Oxford University Press & Pearson respectively. He is also an Associate Editor with European Management Journal, & Journal of Strategic Marketing. Dr. Paul introduced the Masstige model and measure for brand management, CPP Model for internationalization, SCOPE framework for small firms and 7-P Framework for International Marketing. His articles have been downloaded over 800,000 times during the last six years. He is ranked among the world's top 0.1% highly cited researchers based on Web of Science statistics with citations increasing at 375 per month in 2021. An author of over 130 research papers in SSCI journals, Justin has over 70 papers are in A or A star journals. He has also served as an associate professor at Nagoya University, Japan and as Department Chair at IIM. In addition, he has taught full courses at Aarhus University- Denmark, Grenoble Eco le de Management-& University of Versailles -France, University-Lithuania, Warsaw -Poland and has been a visiting professor at University of Chicago, Vienna University- Austria, Fudan & UIBE-China, UAB- Barcelona and Madrid and has published three best- selling case studies with Ivey & Harvard. He has visited over 60 countries as a visiting professor / speaker.

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Professor Jane Ali-Knight

Dr Jane Ali-Knight is a Professor in Festival and Event Management at Edinburgh Napier University, and a Visiting Professor at Curtin University, Perth. She is currently leading and developing the festival and event subject group as well as lecturing at universities internationally and facilitating training and development in the field. Her core activities fall into three main areas: designing and delivering event and festival related academic and commercial programs; research and publications and conferences and professional festival and event delivery. Current academic research activity focuses on accessibility and inclusion in festivals and events; festival and event lifecycles, recovery, resilience, and wellbeing tourism. She is currently a board member of BAFA (British Arts and Festivals Association); Hidden Door Festival; Without Walls; WIT (Women in Tourism) and is a Fellow of the HEA and Royal Society of the Arts.