Dr Peter Robinson

Peter is Head of the Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Management at Leeds Beckett University. His expertise covers visitor attractions, transport operations, heritage and museums management, tourism landscapes, urban and rural regeneration and placemaking, business development and Cold War tourism.

Peter is an award-winning author and has published both academic books and peer-reviewed journals, as well as books covering a range of transport, tourism and landscape histories. He is also a features writer for a number of publications and has appeared on several television and radio programmes discussing the travel and tourism industry.

Peter has owned businesses in photography, travel, ICT, waste management and publishing, and has delivered consultancy work for organisations in a several industry sectors worldwide. In 2021, he was Awarded the Victor Middleton Prize for Education and Scholarship by the Association for Tourism in Higher Education (ATHE).

Peter is a Fellow of the Tourism Management Institute and the Yorkshire and Humber representative, a Fellow of the Tourism Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Travel and Tourism, and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is Co-Chair of The Association for Tourism in Higher Education (ATHE), a Director of The Institute of Travel and Tourism and he represents ATHE on the Tourism Society Board. He is also part of an ABTA Working Group on skills and qualifications and is regularly invited to speak at conferences about employability and careers in the tourism and hospitality sectors. He is Chair of a charity co-delivering a multi-million-pound regeneration project for the historic house and country park at Elvaston in Derbyshire and is also the Education and Outreach Officer for The Airfield Research Group. He was formerly Vice-Chair of The Museum of Carpet.

Previously, Peter worked as Head of Marketing, Leisure, Innovation and Enterprise at the University of Wolverhampton, and also managed the institution’s Arts Council funded Arena Theatre. Before working in academia, he managed EU-funded projects in the Peak District and tourism projects in Oxfordshire, and spent several years working for The National Trust.

Peter teaches a broad spectrum of subjects but specialises in tourism business development, destination creation, visitor experience, heritage tourism, dark tourism, destination marketing and urban regeneration.