Contemporary Tourist Behaviour

Dr David Bowen gained his first degree in geography from the University of Oxford. His interest in academic study related to tourism started whilst working in Kenya, east Africa. As a result, he studied for an MSc in Tourism at Surrey University and, after joining Oxford Brookes University, completed a PhD entitled Consumer Satisfaction on Long-Haul Tours. David has developed and taught numerous university courses on tourism at undergraduate and postgraduate level. He is currently Reader and Head of Doctoral Programmes at the Oxford Brookes Business School.

David's research interests focus on tourist consumer behaviour and tourism destination development. He has published on these and other topics in Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Management, Service Industries Journal, Tourism Geographies, Tourism Recreation Research, International Journal of Tourism Research and Journal of Vacation Marketing.
David's latest publications and conference presentations have been generated from two funded projects. One project (with Dr Jackie Clarke) was focussed on the notion of familiar tourism with empirical work based on two areas of Wales, UK: the Gower Peninsula and the Mawddach Estuary. The research was supported by a British Academy/Leverhulme grant. The second project (with Shahida Zubair and Professor Levent Altinay) explored aspects of politics, power and tourism destination development in Maldives. As with the familiar tourism study it generated a number of journal articles and conference presentations. Additionally, it was followed by a co-edited book publication: Malatesta et al (2021) Atolls of the Maldives: Nissology and Geography published by Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, USA
In relation to his university role with doctoral students, David recently co-wrote a new text on doctoral study: De Vita, G., Begley, J. and Bowen, D (2021) Roadmap to a Successful PhD in Business & Management and the Social Sciences published by Peter Lang, Oxford, UK.