Richard Smith

Senior Consultant, England, UK

Experience

Richard has worked in destination tourism for over 25 years and has worked as a tourism consultant for more than 15 years. He has been involved in a wide range of projects during this period. Recent work has included the creation of destination strategies and action plans, structural and service reviews and market research for destinations, particularly in business tourism. He has worked with a range of destination organisations, both internationally and in the UK – including National Tourist Organisations, regions, cities, rural destinations and resorts.

Before joining TEAM, Richard had over 10 years’ experience in destination tourism including work with tourist boards and local authorities. He has worked at senior management levels in regional (East Midlands), city (Edinburgh) and resort (Scarborough) organisations. He had responsibility for tourism development, destination and organisation planning, and the development of research and intelligence frameworks.

Core skills and qualifications

Richard has an MA in geography, a post graduate diploma in tourism management from the University of Surrey and qualifications in market research. He is a member of the Tourism Society and Tourism Management Institute.

Specialisms

Richard specialises in tourism research and intelligence. As a researcher, he has established innovative frameworks for analysing and assessing the performance of tourism destinations and modelling impacts and tourism development scenarios. He is an experienced market researcher who has both managed and undertaken over one hundred pieces of primary market research in both leisure and business tourism.

He also specialises in strategy development and action planning for destinations and has been involved in developing market-focused plans (both leisure and business) for a range of areas. These have included England, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bradford, Worthing, Warwickshire, and the North East.