Professor Perry Hobson, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement at Taylor’s University, was invited to chair the Closing Plenary “Panel of Editors” session at the Consumer Behavior in Tourism Symposium (CBTS) in Italy. CBTS 2017 was celebrating “A Decade of Research in Consumer Behavior in Tourism” with a special focus on “Mindfulness, Well-being and Happiness in Tourism Research: From Definitions to Measurements”. The Symposium was organised by the Competence Centre in Tourism Management and Tourism Economics (TOMTE) at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (UniBZ).
In his role as Editor in-Chief of the SSCI indexed Journal of Vacation Marketing, Prof Hobson was pleased to welcome a distinguished panel of Editors that included; Professor Albert Assaf (University of Massachusetts, USA) who is the Editor of Tourism Economics, Professor Chris Cooper (Oxford Brookes University, UK) co-Editor of Current Issues in Tourism, Dr Serena Volo (University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy) Editor of the Int’l Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Professor Scott McCabe (University of Nottingham, UK) the in-coming co-Editor of the Annals of Tourism Research and Dr Daniele Dalli, the Editor of Mercati e Competitivita (the journal of the Italian Marketing Association). Each editor was initially asked to identify a key issue relating to research in the field, and then a more specific issue they felt their journal was facing. It was then open to questions from all delegates at the conference.
In summing up, Prof Hobson noted that, “The general consensus was that that the role of the Editor has changed. Given the issues of impact-factors and journal rankings there has been substantial increase in research output submitted to top journals. Editors of these journals are now struggling to find academics to review papers – and in turn this is leading them to increasingly act as a gate-keeper, as they now have to ‘desk-reject’ more papers”. As a member of the Board of TOMTE, Prof Perry has regularly contributed to previous CBTS events over the last decade, such as CBTS 2015 which was held in Munich (Germany) where he spoke as part of a ‘Panel of Editors’ session, and also led the CBTS 2015 PhD Student Forum. UniBZ is an exchange partner of Taylor’s University, and both institutions are also members of the International Centre of Excellence in Hospitality & Tourism Education (THE-ICE) accreditation body - (Global Matters 2018)