Tourism facing the challenge of transformation
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and its Economics and Business Studies, a group of professors from the tourism field of the institution reflect upon the current situation of the sector at a key moment. On the one hand, they bring their ideas on what has been the evolution of tourism over the last twenty-five years and the elements and key factors that have conditioned this evolution to date. On the other hand, based on the crisis generated by the effects of the pandemic, they deliberate on identifying possible future scenarios and the key factors that may condition them.
ODS
Pablo DíazDegree in Economic and Business Science from the University of Malaga in two specialties: Public Economics and Regional and Urban Economics. Doctorate in Economic and Business Science from the University of Malaga. Thesis – with Spanish Tourism grant 2002 – on online tourist destinations. Publications in the form of articles and book chapters on the subject of tourism and technology, among others. Professor of Economic and Business Studies at the UOC in the field of tourism at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Lluís Alfons Garay TamajónLluís Alfons Garay Tamajón is an associate professor in Economic and Business Studies at the UOC. His main areas of research interest are focused on the various forces that transform tourist activity, particularly collaborative, cocreative, sustainable and responsible processes relating to said activity and which impact on touristic and non-touristic environments and organizations, both urban and rural. He is also the head researcher of the research group NOUTUR (UOC), which aims to analyse nature and the impacts of tourism and leisure activities on the current environment, characterized by the growing relevance of information and communication technology (ICT) and the need to transition to sustainable and/or responsible touristic models.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4209-3319
RESEARCHGATE: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lluis_Garay
SCHOLAR: https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=dIK83WEAAAAJ&hl=en
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lluis-garay-53007b9?originalSubdomain=es
Joan Miquel GomisAssociate professor of Economics and Business Studies at the UOC. He was academic director of the degree in Tourism from 2006 to 2017. Director of the magazine Oikonomics. Doctorate from the department of Economics and Business Organization (UB). His teaching and research (with the group NOUTUR at the UOC) focus on the tourism sector in the application of ICT to commercialization, innovation, sustainability and destination management.
Francesc González RevertéDoctorate in Geography from the UAB and master’s in Geography from the same university. Currently professor of undergraduate and postgraduate in Tourism for Economic and Business Studies at the UOC. Director of the Tourism degree at the UOC, his academic work has been recognized with various teaching and research accreditations. His research interests are the processes and dynamics of development of sun and sea tourist destinations, the social and cultural impact of tourist events and the introduction and use of new technology at smart tourist destinations. He is also interested in online learning applied to tourism. He is a researcher with the research group New Perspectives on Tourism and Leisure (NOUTUR) at the UOC. He has taken part in various R&D projects on tourism and has published articles, books and book chapters in various magazines and specialist editorials at a national and international level. He has also written numerous teaching materials for subjects on tourism for undergraduates and postgraduates.
Soledad Morales PérezDoctorate in Geography from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and associate professor in Economic and Business Studies (UOC). Currently academic director of the master’s in Sustainable Tourism and ICT and of the master’s in Strategy and Sustainable Management of Tourist Destinations, organized alongside the World Tourism Organization. Member of the research group in Tourism at the UOC NOUTUR and leader of various R&D projects in the tourism field. Her research interests are currently focused on analysing the impact of platform economy on the tourist space, processes of touristic development from the perspective of gender and the involvement of academia for responding to current societal needs, a topic linked to the project CIRCLET Erasmus+ which she co-leads at the UOC.
Julie WilsonHMember of the research group NOUTUR, where she teaches and researches in the field of tourism and sustainability. Currently Chair of the Tourism, Leisure and Global Change Committee of the International Geographical Union, and in 2019 was awarded the international Roy Wolfe prize by the American Association of Geographers (AAG). Her research interests focus on analysing tourism in socioterritorial transformation of the urban/rural landscape, the role of culture and creativity in the generation of new forms of sustainability in tourism and the platform economy/evolutionary economic geography as interpretative frameworks for understanding tourism. She has published 10 edited books and over 40 articles and book chapters in noteworthy editorials and is a member of the editorial committees of the magazines JCR/SJR Q1 Tourism Geographies and Current Issues in Tourism.
