Associates

Dr Alastair Morrison

Alastair Morrison, based in Shanghai, China, specialises in the field of tourism and hospitality marketing. His current projects include the development of an international strategic marketing plan for a provincial government tourism administration in China; a tourism master plan for a Yangtze River delta city; and a tourism development concept plan for an area of the Grand Canal and several DMO internet marketing projects.

He moved back into the world of consultancy in 2006, following a distinguished career in tourism and hospitality education in the USA and Canada. Before going into academia, he worked in Canada as a management consultant in hospitality and tourism, latterly as President of The Economic Planning Group of Canada (EPG), where he specialised in tourism and hospitality marketing planning and research, project evaluation and feasibility studies, tourism planning and development.

Alastair has lived and worked in five different countries and has had a wide variety of experience in the global tourism industry. He has provided marketing and development advice in Australia, Bahrain, China, Ghana, Honduras, Hong Kong SAR, India, Italy, Jamaica, Macau SAR, Malaysia, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, and Vietnam. Recently, he has completed over 25 individual tourism projects within China.

Alastair has developed and facilitated training programmes on behalf of UNWTO for eight South Asian countries and the China-Tibet Tourism Bureau; European Union; the US Agency for International Development; and Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI). He is the Co-founder and Co-director of the Certified Destination Management Executive (CDME) programme.

Alastair is also a Distinguished Professor Emeritus specialising in the area of tourism and hospitality marketing in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana, USA). He is a Visiting Professor at the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Strathclyde, Scotland, and was the Queensland Tourist and Travel Corporation Visiting Lecturer at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. He teaches regularly on tourism marketing and promotion at Hong Kong University, and at IULM (Milan) and AILUN (Sardinia) in Italy.

He is also the author of three leading books on tourism marketing and development: Hospitality and Travel Marketing, 4th edition; The Tourism System, 6th edition and Tourism: Bridges across Continents. He has published more than 200 academic articles and conference proceedings, as well as over 50 research monographs related to marketing and tourism.

He is an Editorial Board Member of several major hospitality and tourism academic research journals and is also active in several major industry associations. He has served as Chairman of the Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) - Canada Chapter, Board member of the CenStates TTRA Chapter, Vice President of the International Society of Travel and Tourism Educators (ISTTE), and Chairman of Association of Travel Marketing Executives (ATME).

Key areas of expertise

Destination marketing planning; tourism development plans, project evaluation and feasibility studies; internet marketing and e-commerce; training programme development and facilitation; market and marketing research; academic programme development and administration in tourism and hospitality management; programme and organisation assessment.