III Conference “Advances in Tourism Economics”, Lisbon

On the 23rd and 24th of April I travelled to Lisbon, Portugal to attend the conference “Advances in Tourism Economics”. This conference was the third under a biennial conference series on Advances in Tourism Economics (ATE). The 2009 conference was jointly organised by the Portuguese Association for Tourism Research and Development (APIDT) and the Research Centre in Tourism, Innovation and Services (CITIS) of Lusiada University in Lisbon.

The conference attracted around 120 delegates from more than 20 countries, featuring 80 paper presentations, supported by two keynote speeches. I chaired two of the parallel sessions, one on “Motivation and consumer satisfaction in tourism markets” and another on “Tourism development and emerging products”. The first session featured papers from five and the second from four countries. Both sessions run very well and included a diversified, yet high quality range of papers. Besides chairing these two sessions, I also acted as a member of the scientific committee.

The conference program included a gala dinner at the Atrio Casino Restaurant (Lisbon Casino), after which we had the chance to try our luck at the slot machines using the €5 voucher given to all delegates. Needless to say that all delegates are still academics since no one has won the jackpot!

With Dr. Álvaro Matias and Professor Manuela Sarmento, co-chairs of the conference