President's Message

It has been almost a year since the new executive was elected to lead the Academy. We have accomplished a number of things during that time, and also have many more initiatives in progress.

Our outreach activities have started, with the publication of writing hints for academics. I would like to think all members who contributed to this document. It has been received well and we are getting repeated requests to share it further. It will be issued again in September. The publication of the journals' list (currently 333 refereed tourism, hospitality and events journals) has also been received well. Other outreach initiatives that are currently in progress include preparation of teaching and learning materials, making research resources available through our revised website and providing information about publicly available tourism research information.

The ad hoc committee examining membership has also come up with a number of initiatives that are going to be introduced for the upcoming conference. Important changes have been made to the process through which new fellow are nominated. Leading scholars will be invited to attend the conference without any commitment to be nominated. Only after the conference will a decision be made whether or not to proceed to the nomination process.

The development of a new Academy website is progressing much more slowly than anticipated. We have a working version but it still has a number of bugs. Hopefully, we can get it up and running for Fellows soon and then launch it publicly in time for the northern autumn semester.

We have also had expression of interest to host the 2019 conference.

Conference update

The 2017 conference preparations are progressing smoothly. Prof. Bao Jigang and his colleagues at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou China are going to be our gracious hosts. We shall be staying at the newly opened hotel on campus. I visited it in early June. The rooms are excellent, food and dining outlets superb and the location very convenient to most places of interest.

The dates have been set. The conference will run from Sunday, May 21 through to Thursday, May 25. A draft agenda has also been prepared with sessions focusing on the China experience, knowledge transfer, developments in measuring tourist, education and teaching, developments in marketing and equity and diversity in tourism academia.

An exciting companion session is also being developed which will include a visit to the nearby Kaiping World Heritage site and its 1300 'castles'.

Stop press

Sara Dolnicar suggested that the Academy could develop a series of videos of Fellows talking about their key contributions to tourism academia, and that these should then be posted on YouTube.  This idea was endorsed fully by the executive.

The conference host has generously agreed to provide production facilities and a film crew so that we can film Fellows there. A major publisher has also expressed interest in sponsoring the editing process and the production of a quality end products. More details to Follow.

Reminder

Fellows are reminded to nominate Emerging Scholars and Visiting Scholars for the 2017 Conference. Also, if you have any suggestions for the 2019 conference venue, please let us know. Send details to Leslie.

Best wishes,

Bob
bob.mckercher@polyu.edu.hk