Christopher Ryan

Professor – Tourism & Hospitality Management

E-mail

Description

Professor Chris Ryan has been at the University of Waikato since 1998, having arrived from his previous post of Professor of Tourism at the Northern Territory University. To be honest, many of his immediate colleagues do not have a clue as to what he is talking about. One moment he is caring about needs to deconstruct the text of hybridization between the pre-modern, modern and post-modern that forms tourism, and the next he is trying to get multi-dimensional scaling to work on some piece of quantitative data. To those of you are looking for something serious about this person, Chris is the editor of 'Tourism Management', has written well over 200 academic journal articles, book chapters and conference papers and some books (we think he has given up counting because he claims he cannot remember what he has written). On the other hand it might be old age! In 1999 he was appointed to the APEC Tourism Ministers Advisory Committee by the Korean Social Science Association, and again for the 2004 APEC Tourism Ministers' Conference held in Chile by the APEC Centre for Sustainable Tourism. Other international work includes work for the World Tourism Organisation. Within New Zealand he has completed work for Tourism New Zealand, the Ministry of Tourism, Tourism Auckland, Tourism Waikato and individual private sector organisations. One of these pieces of work, in 2004, required a review of New Zealand's Tourism Research Strategy on behalf of the Ministry of Tourism. IN 2010 with co-researchers he won research contracts from CNTA and Shaanxi Province. His experiences range from work involved in helping to establish a World Heritage Site to advising on pricing for a jet boat operation. Chris is an Honorary Professor of the University of Wales, and Visiting Professor at Emirates Academy, Dubai, Beijing International Studies University and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His awards include those for research winning papers (including recognition from the Beijing Social Sciences Committee) and a life time achievement award from the Taiwan Association for Recreation and Leisure Studies. He is interested in research methods and epistemologies, in tourist behaviours and the consequences of those behaviours in terms of impacts - social, psychological and environmental; and in the business organisations that shape those tourist experiences. His social science background is in economics and psychology having degrees from London, Nottingham, Nottingham Trent and Aston Universities. He also possesses an English sense of humour!