Professor Dimitrios Buhalis

The Timeshare Association (TATOC) has announced that Professor Dimitrios Buhalis from Bournemouth University will be the keynote speaker at its annual conference next month.

With the theme of the e-tourism revolution, Professor Buhalis will show how the internet has emerged as a pervasive and robust platform for tourism destination distribution and management. He will also discuss how web 2.0 and consumer-generated, content-based social media are developing those issues further as well as on a global scale.

Professor Buhalis will show delegates how only tourism organisations and destinations that take full advantage of these opportunities will be able to capitalise on the benefits and enhance their competitiveness.

Professor Buhalis is a Strategic Management and Marketing expert with specialisation in Technology and Tourism. He is currently Established Chair in Tourism and Deputy Director of the International Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Research (ICTHR) and Director of the John Kent Institute in Tourism at the School of Tourism at Bournemouth University and Professorial Observer at the Bournemouth University Senate. He is also the President of the International Federation of Information Technology for Travel and Tourism (IFITT).

He previously worked at the Universities of Surrey, Westminster and the Aegean and has held visiting appointments at ESSEC in France, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China University of Aveiro, Portugal, and the Modul University in Vienna, Austria. He is regarded as an expert in the impacts of ICTs in the tourism industry, the management of tourism distribution channels as well as in strategic tourism marketing and management.

Professor Buhalis recently included accessible tourism in his research portfolio. He has worked around the world, written 14 books and more than 100 articles. He has also been involved with a number of European Commission FP5 and FP6 projects and regularly advises the World Tourism Organisation, the World Tourism and Travel Council (WTTC) and the European Commission on eTourism.

• Lisa Ann Schreier, the well-known ‘Timeshare Crusader’, will be another key speaker at the TATOC conference, which is entitled ‘Meeting the Challenge’, and takes place from March 9-11 at the Park Royal Hotel in Stretton, near Warrington. Lisa began her career in the timeshare industry in 1998 in Florida and currently manages Timeshare Insights where she writes, educates, consults and speaks on timeshare and related issues.

For more information visit www.tatoc.co.uk/tatoc-conference, or to download a delegate form, click here