Narcis Bassols Gardella

Lecturer and researcher in Sustainable Destination Development. Previous teaching about destination and hospitality management. Research about the production, management and consumption of destinations and how to make them more sustainable and socially fair. I am also the manager of the masters course in Sustainable Destination Development at Campus Gotland. I envision the university as a highly cooperative institution, between students and teachers, among departments and with society at large.

Born and largely brought up in rural Catalonia. Educational and professional backgrounds in Germany, UK, Spain and Latin America. I am a seasoned professional with a broad experience in tourism/hospitality and export. I was some fifteen years active as an export salesman, looking for new markets but also for fair trade-offs and long-term relationships with the customers. I moved on to hospitality and tourism, first as a restaurant manager. For the last ten years, I’ve been a lecturer and researcher in tourism and hospitality, a task which I accomplish with dedication and passion. I am keen about teaching undergrads and helping them to find their way in life. I am also keen about teaching to postgrads or lifelong learning students, so as to give them new visions about their professional endeavours. Research is to me more of a vocation than a duty and I love the challenge of publishing but also love helping colleagues and students to become better researchers via co-authorships, peer review or supervisions. Finally, I like being in touch with the industry and the government, helping companies and territories to become more competitive through research projects, lifelong learning and consultancy. Speaking six languages, I am a real team player. Multiculturally-minded, a passion of mine is getting people to meet and cooperate with each other so as to build a better world.

Why do attraction typologies and visitor segments shift and change in (multifaceted) destinations over time? What are the social, spatial, economical an environmental consequences of these shifts?

Tourism is a multidisciplinary domain, so in trying to answer the above questions my research has touched upon different subjects related to the destination cycle at large (production, management/branding and consumption of places). The final goal is analyzing this 'triple helix' so as to put forth proposals to make the related processes more sustainable and fair. A cross-sectoral view of places and territories is central to their sustainability, social equality and competitiveness, therefore my research has taken on the view of the public sector, the for-profit companies, the residents and the visitors to destinations.

My frameworks are mainly critical geography and sociology (Santos, Panosso, Carrión, García-Canclini, Leff), tourism geographies (Wall, Page) and the evolution of destinations (Russo, Anton, Richards, Butler, Chadefaud).

I've worked with both qualitative and quantitative methods (though the former are more attractive to me) and my field cases are from Latin America, mainly Colombia. Speaking of cases, I am a firm advocate for case studies and case-based research (Yin, Stake) as a means to connect research to the community's needs as well as for the students to understand complex situations or processes.