Associates

Thomas Hoefels

Thomas Hoefels has been a management consultant in the fields of tourism and hospitality for more than 20 years. He has acquired a wealth of experience and expertise through the management and implementation of small and large-scale international and regional tourism programmes and projects in more than 60 countries. He specialises in tourism, with a particular focus on hospitality development, feasibility studies, due diligence, organisational/institutional analyses and economic impacts of tourism development as well as countrywide masterplans.

Thomas has worked both as an independent management consultant and at executive levels of management consulting companies (e.g. Managing Director of Steigenberger Consulting and Horwath Consulting). His clients have included international donor and funding agencies, governments, private enterprises and investors.

One of his assignments in the last ten years was the preparation of a Tourism Masterplan for the State of Qatar. Together with Andreas Hauser, also an associate of TEAM Tourism Consulting, the foundation was laid for the destination's present success story. Even today, the originally devised target objectives in terms of tourism arrivals and hotel capacities for the year 2010 count as benchmarks and are expected to be met in due course.

Another project in the Middle East was the elaboration of a sustainable concept and feasibility study for a large-scale and multi-functional deluxe resort in the Sultanate of Oman comprising an Arab village, several hotels, villas, congress, sport, wellness and spa facilities. The work encompassed market and site analyses, profit and loss statements, cash flow projections and risk analyses, architectural design, and production of dossiers, brochures and DVDs in order to attract operators and investors as well as to initiate contractual negotiations.

At a regional level, he headed the elaboration of a Sustainable Tourism Masterplan for the Northwest coast of Sri Lanka. The client was a private development and construction company which provided the Tourism Ministry with expertise to overcome the effects of the tsunami disaster.

Another of Thomas' projects has been the identification of accommodation development opportunities in North-West Russia, encompassing site inspections and evaluations, elaboration of product concepts and profit and loss statements, coaching, organisation and execution of seminars and workshops. This sub-component of an EU-funded project also included the identification of worldwide investment opportunities, funding programmes and donor agencies for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).

In addition, UNWTO commissioned him to advise the Municipality of Qingdao (China) and the local hotel industry regarding their performance at the 2008 Olympic Games.

Thomas is now a visiting lecturer in tourism and destination management at the private university Accadis in Germany. For the past 20 years, he has organised and delivered seminars and workshops relating to tourism, and has contributed a series of scientific articles in the hospitality and tourism literature (e.g. Travel & Tourism Intelligence TTI, The Tourist Review AIEST).

Key areas of expertise

Sustainable social and environmental agendas; responsible tourism; community consultation and involvement; workshop facilitation; training for business including tourism marketing training (planning and delivery); tourism training programmes; training on destination management; developing public/private sector partnerships; communications plans and campaigns; tourism master plans; mentoring; project management; human resource development.