Klaus Lengefeld, Senior Advisor Sustainable Tourism

Klaus Lengefeld holds a BSc in psychology and a diploma in pedagogics from his birth city Frankfurt’s J.W. Goethe University. He took postgraduate studies in rural development at the Technical University of Berlin and the International Compact Course on Attraction Management for tourism practitioners, a joint initiative of 5 leading tourism institutes of the Alpine region championed by Swiss St. Gallen University. Klaus has also a very practical experience - he is a qualified truck mechanic trained with German truckmaker MAN.

After 15 years of work for sustainable development and appropriate technologies for German development agencies DED and GTZ, Klaus Lengefeld started his second career in tourism as advisor for tourism and sustainable development for the German-Central American regional tourism project FODESTUR in 1997. With its two components – image creation (“Centroamérica: so small, and yet so big…), and product development – Klaus supported the seven countries of that war-stroken region to position themselves as a multi-destination on the international tourism market.

Back in Germany, Klaus started as Senior Advisor Sustainable Tourism at GTZ Headquarter significant initiatives to bridge the gap between development cooperation and mainstream tourism with focus on the hospitality industry. He was the first to take a closer look into the socio-economic interaction of hotels, All-Inclusive and luxury resorts with local economies in destinations from the Caribbean to South-East Asia. And he initiated several Public Private Partnership projects involving major hotel companies for sustainable development in destinations. 

One of his first and still preferred partners is the International Tourism Partnership ITP, under which most of the major hotel companies work together to make their business more responsible. Other partners with whom Klaus is working are Six Senses, TUI, Kempinski, Sandals, Punta Cana Group, Lufthansa, Boeing, Deloitte, Sama Dubai, ITB Messe Berlin and PATA, the Pacific Asia Tourism Association. Representing GTZ in PATA, he has been promoted in only 2 years from PATA`s Sustainable Tourism Committee and Industry Council to become member of PATA’s Board of Directors.

Klaus is visiting professor teaching tourism policy, sustainability and tourism in developing countries at Heilbronn University. He has been a keynote speaker or presenter at numerous tourism events around the world, and serves as member of the jury for prestigious tourism awards such as the PATA Gold awards and the Sustainable Hotel award of the HICAP, Hotel Investment Conference Asia Pacific.