President's Message

Warm greetings to all fellows. I hope that all goes well.

New Fellows

Two new fellows have been added to our ranks. Please join with me in congratulating Frederic Dimanche of SKEMA Business School, France, and Sara Dolnicar, University of Queensland, Australia, as new fellows of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism. Frederic and Sara have assumed membership immediately and will be officially inducted at the 2015 conference. I am delighted that our membership now comprises these two outstanding tourism scholars.

Office Bearers

I wish first to congratulate those who were elected to office.  My sincere thanks go to the body of fellows for the confidence placed in me by electing me as President for a second term.  Other office bearers are:

First Vice President: David Airey
Second Vice President: Tom Baum
Treasurer: Brian King
Board Chair: Pauline Sheldon

I particularly welcome new office bearer David Airey to the position of 1st VP and take this opportunity to express thanks to Haiyan Song for his substantial contributions to the former Executive. I am very pleased that Tom and Brian agreed to re-nominate, and look forward to working with David, Tom, Brian and Pauline over the coming term.

Responsibility of Academy Members

The Academy by-Laws are quite clear on the responsibility of members to comply with by-laws. Two areas where some fellows are not meeting their responsibilities involve responsibilities to vote at elections and the responsibility to attend the biennial conference. I shall be liaising with the Secretariat and contacting some fellows soon (full fellows only, not fellows emerita) to inform them that their membership of the Academy is forfeited as a result of their failure to meet membership responsibilities.

Responsibility of Sponsors of Candidates for Fellowship

In the recent election for new fellows, one candidate's application material was incomplete. Emails from the secretariat pointing out this deficiency went unanswered by the fellow sponsoring the candidate. I think we would all agree that such a situation must not happen in the future. We cannot consistently, as a body, lament the lack of inclusion of new fellows, while adopting a cavalier attitude to the nominations process. My message to all fellows is this: Sponsorship of new candidates for fellowship is welcomed. But if you are not prepared to meet your responsibilities to ensure all required materials are submitted to demonstrate the candidate's strengths, then don't get involved in the first place. Relatedly, if a fellow sponsors a candidate then that fellow should assume responsibility for attending the conference where the candidate is presented.

Certificates for emerging scholars

The Executive has arranged for certificates to be prepared and sent to all current and previous winners of the Emerging Scholar award. I wish to thank the Secretariat for their fine effort in actioning this. FYI, the list of emerging scholar award winners is as follows:

2013 Albert Assaf, Robert Li, Scott Cohen
2011 Ulrike Gretzel, Susanne Becken
2009 James Petrick, Andreas Papatheodorou, Honggen Xiao, Jaume Rosselló

2015 Conference

I spoke with Andreas Papatheodorou, University of the Aegean, and host of the 2015 conference to be held on the island of Rhodes. Andreas was pleased to inform me that there is already substantial industry support for the event and preparations go well. More news will be announced later on this.

Best wishes,

Larry
l.dwyer@unsw.edu.au