The Roy Wolfe Award 2021, presented by the American Association of Geographers’ Recreation, Tourism & Sport Specialty Group, has gone to Salvador Anton Clavé, professor of Regional Geographic Analysis at Rovira i Virgili University and currently director of the Eurecat technology centre’s Vila-seca-based Tourism Innovation Department, for his outstanding academic contributions in tourism geography. Until 2019, Salvador Anton Clavé was the scientific director of the Foundation of the Science and Technology Park of Tourism and Leisure of Catalonia, now part of Eurecat. The Eurecat technology centre’s Tourism Innovation Department seeks to promote innovation and sustainability in tourism by developing data systems, digital technologies and market intelligence.
Salvador Anton Clavé’s research examines the dynamics of change in tourism destinations, tourism urbanisation processes, leisure globalisation and theme park development, tourism’s role in local and regional development, the spatial behaviour of tourists and the impact of new technologies on tourism and destinations. He has published in leading international academic publishers (Routledge, Ashgate, Emerald, Springer and CABI) and in top-tier scientific journals such as Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Tourism Geographies, Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, Land Use Policy, Tourism Management Perspectives, European Urban and Regional Studies and Tourism Economics.
His best-known books include The Global Theme Park Industry (CABI, 2007); Análisis Territorial del Turismo y Planificación de Destinos Turísticos (Tirant lo Blanch, 2011, with JF. Vera, F. López and M. Marchena), Geographies of Tourism: European Research Perspectives (Emerald, 2013, co-edited with J. Wilson) and Tourism Destination Evolution (Routledge, 2017, co-edited with P. Brouder, A. Gill and D. Ioannides).
At Rovira i Virgili University he is the principal researcher in the Territorial Analysis and Tourism Studies research group. He was director and dean of the URV’s Faculty of Tourism and Geography between 2002 and 2014 and coordinator of the PhD programme in Tourism and Leisure until 2020. He was a visiting scholar at the International Institute of Tourism Studies at George Washington University in the US in the 2015-16 academic year and has undertaken research stays including at the Universities of Exeter and Nottingham (UK) and George Washington University and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (USA).
The Roy Wolfe Award, which has been presented annually since 1988, is named after one of the pioneering researchers in tourism geography.
