Greg Richards

Greg Richards is Professor of Leisure Studies at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He has conducted extensive research on cultural and creative tourism over the past 20 years, producing major texts on Cultural Tourism in Europe (1996); Cultural Attractions and European Tourism (2001); Tourism and Gastronomy (2002); The Global Nomad: Backpacker Travel in Theory and Practice (2004); Cultural Tourism – Global and Local Perspectives (2007) Tourism, Creativity and Development (2007) and Eventful Cities: Cultural Management and Urban Regeneration (2010).

As co-originator of the creative tourism concept, he has worked on projects for numerous national governments, national tourism organisations and municipalities. He has worked extensively on the analysis and development of cultural and creative tourism in cities such as Barcelona (ES), Budapest (HU), London, Newcastle, Manchester and Edinburgh (UK) Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Den Bosch (NL), Porto (PT), Sibiu (RO), Amman (Jordan) and Macau (China). He directed a number of projects for the European Commission on topics including cultural tourism, crafts tourism, sustainable tourism, tourism education and labour mobility in the tourism industry.

He has an extensive career in tourism research and education, with posts at London Metropolitan University (UK), Tilburg University (The Netherlands), Universitat Roviria I Virgili, Tarragona (Spain), the University of the West of England (Bristol, UK) and Tilburg University. He was recently a European Union Marie Curie Fellow at the Interarts Foundation in Barcelona.