Professor Michael Hitchcock, Member of Executive Board, Academic Director & Dean of Faculty, IMI University Centre, International Hotel Management Institute

Michael Hitchcock is the Academic Director and Dean of the IMI University Centre in Luzern. On completion of his doctorate at the University of Oxford in 1983, he began his professional career teaching in higher education in the UK. Following 6 years at the University of Hull, he was appointed Professor of Tourism at the University of North London in 1995 and a Centenary Professor the following year. In 2000 he was appointed Director of the International Institute for Culture, Tourism and Development at London Metropolitan University and in 2008 he became a Deputy Dean at the University of Chichester. He has written and edited 14 books, and has had 38 refereed journal papers to his name, as well as many other published outputs.  He has mainly been concerned with questions of tourism and development, especially in Southeast Asia, but has recently written a paper on Switzerland. Professor Hitchcock is from the UK, but he has lived in Germany, the Netherlands and Indonesia, and has taught on British Council funded programmes in Malaysia, Tanzania, Ghana and India.