Dr Brent Lovelock - Senior Lecturer
Co-Director, Centre for Recreation Research
Office: Commerce 4.32
Tel 64 3 479 8069
Email brent.lovelock@otago.ac.nz
Brent is a Senior Lecturer with the Department of Tourism. His background is in natural resource management and protected area tourism and recreation. Brent's main research interest has been the application of sustainable tourism within protected natural areas. He has undertaken research in both Canada, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region, examining collaborative planning processes for sustainable tourism development. The research also considers the role of environmental non-governmental organisations in the implementation of sustainable tourism in protected areas, and examines their modes of operation with respect to this goal. Brent's interest in sustainable tourism has seen him become involved in regional tourism planning, and Brent successfully led a team of researchers in the development of a sustainable tourism strategy for the Catlins region in the south of New Zealand in 2004. The Catlins is a remote and peripheral tourism destination, but with a rapidly growing tourism industry - the challenges in this project were to identify strategies that protect the fragile marine wildlife resource and community values whilst fostering sensitive yet economically viable tourism in the area.
Brent undertook a period of sabbatical in Scotland in 2005, where he undertook research on tourism associated with hunting, shooting and fishing. He is currently editing a book on this topic, and will be contributing the findings of cross-national comparative research on obstacles to the growth of hunting tourism, based on the work in Scotland and in New Zealand. More recently, Brent has developed an interest in politically sustainable tourism, examining the ethics of travel to destinations that suffer major human rights abuses, or those that host unethical tourism practices.
In his administrative roles, Brent is a course advisor for the BCom. Brent also coordinates TOUR 102 (Global Tourism), TOUR 211 (Tourism Impacts and Evaluation) and TOUR and TOUX 418 (Destination Management Strategies).