Ageing and the Visitor Economy (PDF)

Joanne Connell is Senior Lecturer in Tourism at University of Exeter Business School, where she is the Programme Manager for the Master's degree in International Tourism Management. She is the author and editor of 10 books on tourism, leisure and events and is associate editor of the leading tourism journal Tourism Management. She is also an associate editor of the open-access journal Heliyon. She has worked widely with tourism organisations and has led and worked as part of small project teams with a number of external bodies in a knowledge-transfer capacity; examples include VisitScotland, New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development and Stirling Council. Having advised and worked extensively with Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority (Scotland's first National Park Authority), she contributed to the development of the National Park's sustainable planning processes. Other projects include event impact evaluations, tourism business surveys, visitor surveys and organisational secondary data analysis to improve business performance. Most recently, her research has focused on helping to make the visitor economy more dementia friendly, and she was a key collaborator with the Historic Royal Palaces and Alzheimer's Society on Rethinking Heritage: A Guide to Help Make Your Site More Dementia-Friendly (2017). She also worked collaboratively with VisitEngland, VisitScotland, the Alzheimer's Society and the National Trust to produce Dementia-Friendly Tourism: A Practical Guide for Businesses (2019).