Dr. Amare Wondirad

Dr. Amare Wondirad is a Senior Lecturer at The University of The South Pacific, School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Suva, Fiji. Dr. Wondirad has worked as an Assistant Professor at Woosong University, in the Republic of Korea. He has also served as a Lecturer and an Assistant Professor at The University of Gondar and Hawassa University, respectively. He completed a Doctor of Philosophy in Hotel and Tourism Management in 2018 from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (the World’s #1 Hospitality and Tourism Management School according to the Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects) and his joint MSc (European Master in Tourism Management, EMTM) from the consortium universities of Southern Denmark, Ljubljana, and Girona in 2012.

His research and teaching areas include ecotourism, sustainable tourism, community-based tourism, and culinary tourism. His conference paper, entitled “Who benefits from the ecotourism sector in southern Ethiopia?” received the Best Conference Paper Award at a prestigious international conference in Korea in 2017. One of his publications, titled “NGOs in ecotourism: patrons of sustainability or neo-colonial agents? Evidence from Africa,” published in Tourism Recreation Research, has also won the Best Article of the Year 2020 Award.

He has published his research findings in top-tier international journals such as Tourism Management (IF: 12.879, CiteScore: 19.80), Current Issues in Tourism (IF: 7.578, CiteScore: 10.6), Journal of Destination Marketing & Management (IF: 7.158, CiteScore: 11.20), Tourism Recreation Research (IF: 4.20, CiteScore: 5.70), Land Use Policy (IF: 6.189, CiteScore: 9.90), Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research (IF: 4.074, CiteScore: 5.40), and Marine Policy (IF: 4.315, CiteScore: 6.80), among others, and has been receiving substantial financial awards (2018–2020) from Woosong University for consistently publishing in high-quality journals. Currently, Dr. Wondirad is working as a principal investigator on a research project that examines tourist satisfaction in the Fiji Islands across the tourism and hospitality sector funded by the University of the South Pacific. Dr. Wondirad is also serving as the topic editor for Sustainability Journal.