Keynote Speakers

Susanne Kraus-Winkler

(copyright: nadinestudenyphotography)

State Secretary for Tourism of the Republic of Austria
Susanne Kraus-Winkler, State Secretary for Tourism, has more than 40 years of practical experience as an entrepreneur in the hotel and restaurant business. As an industry representative she worked in the hospitality industry, as well as in tourism consulting and academic lecturing. She was a founding partner of the LOISIUM Wine & Spa Resort Hotel Group, with the LOISIUM Wine World in one of Austrian’s leading wine regions, two wine & design hotels in Austria and one wine & design hotel in Champagne Region of France and one wine hotel project Alsace, France. In addition, she was partner in several hotel management and tourism consulting companies such as Kohl & Partner Vienna, RIMC Austria GmbH and the Harry’s Home Hotel group and advisory board member of MRP-Hotels, a hotel consulting company in Europe.
Susanne Kraus-Winkler was HOTREC President from 2015 to 2018 representing the European Hospitality industry at EU level in Brussels, as well as President of the Austrian Professional Hotel Association within the Austrian Chamber of Commerce representing 16.000 hotels in Austria. She held several positions in the management board of tourism representations in Austria and at EU level and is member of the Austrian chapter of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

Dagmar Lund-Durlacher

Dagmar Lund-Durlacher, Professor for Sustainable Tourism Management, is Senior Research Associate at the Center for Sustainable Tourism (ZENAT) at the University for Sustainable Development Eberswalde (HNEE) and at the Institute for Tourism Sustainability (ITS) in Vienna. She holds a PhD in Social and Economic Sciences from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration and has been researching and teaching in the field of sustainable tourism for many years, shifting her focus from classical consumer behavior research and marketing in recent years especially to the topics of CSR, climate change, mobility, sustainable gastronomy and transformation processes in tourism. She is active in numerous international scientific networks, as well as a scientific and technical consultant for national and international organizations.

Susanne Becken

Susanne Becken is a Professor of Sustainable Tourism at Griffith University in Australia and a Principal Science Investment Advisor in the Department of Conservation, New Zealand, where she works at the science-policy interface. She is also a Vice Chancellor Research Fellow at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom focusing on sustainable tourism and green transition. Her research focuses on the tourism-environment nexus with particular focus on tourism resource use, climate change, regeneration and resilience, and tourism policy. Susanne is a member of the Air New Zealand Sustainability Advisory Panel, the Travalyst International Advisory Group, and the New Zealand Tourism Data Leadership Group. She is an elected Fellow of the International Academy of the Study of Tourism and a UNWTO Ulysses Award recipient.

Daniel Scott

Dr. Daniel Scott is a Professor and Research Chair in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo. He is also an International Research Fellow at the School of Hospitality and Tourism at the University of Surrey (UK). Daniel has worked extensively on sustainable tourism for 25 years, with a focus on the transition to a low carbon tourism economy and adaptation to the complex impacts of a changing climate. He has advised and led projects for a wide range of government agencies and tourism organizations around the world, including the United Nations World Tourism Organization, United Nations Environment Programme, World Bank, European Tourism Commission, World Travel and Tourism Council, International Olympic Committee, OECD, the Caribbean Tourism Organization. He has also been a contributor to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Assessments and their 1.5°C special report. In 2021, he was ranked in the world top 250 climate scientists by Reuters.  His tourism research publications have been downloaded over a half million times and have been featured in many leading media outlets, including The Economist, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, BBC, Time, Scientific American, and National Geographic.

Harald Friedl

Dr. Harald A. Friedl is Assoc. Professor for Ethics and Sustainability in Tourism at FH JOANNEUM – University of Applied Sciences, Institute for Health and Tourism Management in Bad Gleichenberg, Austria, where he coordinates the Master program “Sustainable Tourism and Management”. He holds a doctorate in philosophy with a focus on the ethics of ethno-tourism using the example of the Tuareg nomads in the Central Sahara.
His applied approach to tourism has been influenced by his twenty years of working as an adventure tour guide alongside his research and teaching. His current research focuses on the ethical problems of flights in times of global warming and on ways to influence (political) systems for defossilisation. He is co-founder of the international think tank “Action for Climate in Tourism Network” (ACTnetwork) together with Susanne Becken (Griffith Institute, Univ. Brisbane, AUS), Daniel Scott (Univ. of Waterloo, CND) and Paul Peeters (Univ. of Wageningen). He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Tourism Panel on Climate Warming (TPCC – https://tpcc.info/foreword/).