David Beirman Ph.D

David Beirman is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism in the Management Discipline Group, University of Technology Sydney. He completed undergraduate and postgraduate degrees majoring in Sociology at the University of NSW. David ‘s 30 year career in the Australian travel industry encompassed work with retail travel agencies, wholesale tour operators, consolidation and air fares, destination marketing and management, human resource management and in-service travel industry training. Prior to joining UTS as a full-time lecturer in November,2009David had developed tourism courses and lectured part-time at UTS, Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School, University of Sydney and University of NSW in market research, Middle East Studies and Sociology. 

His specialist areas of research are tourism risk, crisis and recovery management and destination marketing. He has been widely published in these fields. He has been invited as a keynote speaker in conferences all over the world and has provided crisis and recovery management consultation to governments and tourism businesses in Australia and overseas.David maintains industry connections as a member of PATA’s Rapid Response Crisis Management Task Force and as a founding member since 2003of the Consular Consultative group to the Australian Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade. From2000-2012 he was the founder and National Secretary of the Eastern Mediterranean Tourism Association which promoted and marketed 17 national destinations between Italy and Jordan to the Australian travel trade and consumer markets. He was also Director of the Israel Government Tourism Office (Oceania) from 1994-2006. InSeptember2011and September 2012he co-organised the UN World Tourism Organisation’s conferences held in Australia on the integration of Emergency Management and Tourism. David is the co-chair of the Tourism Risk, Crisis and Recovery Special Interest Group of the Council of Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Educators.He also serves as a board member of the Australian Travel Career Council.

In 2015 he was actively involved with PATA’s Nepal Recovery Taskforce which developed a series of strategies to expedite the recovery of tourism to Nepal following the April 25, 2015 earthquake. In 2016 he worked with the Council of Australian Tour Operators to develop their risk, crisis management strategy guide which is used by over100 Australian based outbound tour operators

In May 2017 David was an invited speaker to the APEC Counter Terrorism and Tourism Resilience Workshop held in Bali, Indonesia and a keynote speaker at Thailand’s National Tourism Conference in June 2017.In October 2017 he was an invited speaker at the inaugural Pacific Tourism Insights Conference jointly organised by PATA and the South Pacific Tourism Organisation.