Category: Uncategorized

Duncan Stewart, ENU alumnus and Managing Partner at insight agency 56 Degree Insight, has a long relationship with Edinburgh Napier University that goes back to 1992, when he enrolled for the BA (Hons) Hospitality (Tourism Management) course. Today Duncan shares with us his interesting story, his career path, and some fantastic photos back from the 90s.

My experience at Edinburgh Napier began in 1992 when I enrolled for the BA (Hons) Hospitality (Tourism Management) course.

It was an exciting time to join the university. Edinburgh Napier had recently achieved university status, and my course was newly established the year before—launched at a time when tourism was (correctly) predicted to become the world’s fastest-growing industry. I soon realised I’d made the right choice. The course struck a great balance between theoretical grounding and real-world insights, including memorable guest speakers from major organisations like British Airways and the chance to complete a work placement in year three.

I kept my placement local, spending six months with the ferry company Stena back ‘home’ in Stranraer. The experience offered a wide range of learning opportunities—from frontline operations to my first real taste of market research, analysing and reporting on passenger survey results. It was this early exposure that ultimately shaped the direction of my career.

I was delighted to graduate with a 1^st class degree and get roles working in tourism research firstly with the Scottish Tourist Board (now VisitScotland), then with the Yorkshire Tourist Board. These roles gave me a solid grounding in the field, from crunching data from the major business and consumer surveys to developing new studies, including those monitoring accommodation occupancy and visitor attraction numbers. An important part of my job at STB was to help students to find their way around our research library a fantastic resource in those pre internet days!

In 1998, I moved to the agency side, joining System Three—then one of the UK’s leading tourism research companies. I spent over 20 years there, building experience with a vast array of clients, from small businesses and public sector bodies to major brands such as Center Parcs and TUI. Over those two decades, the research world changed dramatically. Interviewers with clipboards gave way to online panels, and clients shifted from demanding dense data tables to concise, action-focused insights. My role evolved too—by 2019 I was a Director, jointly managing the company’s Edinburgh office, as it went through several acquisitions and rebrands, eventually becoming part of global research giant Kantar.

In 2019, my fellow Director Jim Eccleston and I took the leap and launched 56 Degree Insight, our own specialist insights agency focused on tourism.

56 Degree Insight has allowed me to apply everything I’ve learned since my time at Napier—turning theory into practice and building on experiences stretching all the way back to those early days tabulating surveys of ferry passengers during my work placement. Despite the initial challenges of launching a new business just before the Covid-19 shutdown, the business has thrived. We’ve supported many of Scotland’s leading travel and tourism organisations—both public and private sector—on everything from visitor surveys and brand evaluations to segmentation studies and customer experience tracking.

And in 2022, I was delighted to reconnect with Professor Anna Leask—who I first met as a new lecturer back in 1992—by partnering with Edinburgh Napier University on a project which explored perceptions of hospitality and tourism as a career, in light of ongoing recruitment and skills challenges. It was nostalgic moment to return to campus to present our findings to an audience including a number of current tourism students at the Tourism Research Centre seminar.

1 – Stena – Extract from my work placement logbook documenting one of my roles making public announcements to delayed passengers!

2 – STB – Me and the rest of the research team in the Scottish Tourist Board library.

 

Welcome to “Meet the Visiting Professor”, a section dedicated to introducing to you our Visiting Professors, where you will have the opportunity to get to know them and find out how they engage with Edinburgh Napier University, and specifically with the Tourism Research Centre (TRC).

Today, Professor and Head Department of Hospitality, Hotel Management and Tourism Brian King talks about his career, how he started collaborating with TRC, what he loves about being a Visiting Professor with ENU. Despite the many places he has lived and worked, he still considers Auld Reekie (Edinburgh) as his “hometown” and has strong relationships with several TRC members.

“I am currently professor and head of the Department of Hospitality, Hotel Management and Tourism at Texas A&M University (TAMU), USA. It has been my pleasure to engage with Edinburgh Napier University as a Visiting Professor through my previous professorships at Victoria University (Australia) and then at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. I joined TAMU in 2022 and have sought to build the relationship with Napier. I grew up in Edinburgh and though I completed my Honors and MSc degrees at Aberdeen and Strathclyde Universities respectively and carry an Australian passport, I still consider Auld Reekie (Edinburgh) as my “hometown”. My research interests are cultural tourism and the visitor economy. Given my cultural interests, I love Napier’s focus on festivals and events. Through the various full-time academic positions that I have held at Universities in Scotland, Australia, Fiji, Hong Kong and now the US, cultural aspects have been ever present. This can be through language, shared heritage, cuisine, festivals and /or sense of place. I have enjoyed how these characteristics blend with place related factors and have researched and written about concepts such as experiencescapes, festivalscapes and even smellscapes!

I had known and/or worked with several Napier professors over the years – Anna Leask, Paul Baron, Jane Ali-Knight and Martin Robertson to name a few and was a professor in Melbourne Australia as well as being a board member of Destination Melbourne. My appointment as Visiting Professor helped us strengthen the connection between tourism agencies in Melbourne and Edinburgh and I enjoyed teaching on the destination leaders program in both cities.  My role as Visiting Professor has involved visiting the Craiglockhart campus (sometimes virtually) to give presentations and to meet with graduate students, industry partners and research collaborators.

During recent months colleagues and I worked on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Napier and Texas A&M University to foster opportunities for student and faculty exchange which has now been ratified. I enjoyed meeting with Napier students when they travelled to our campus to visit in Spring and was delighted that my colleague Dr Sullins led a group of our TAMU students to Napier for study abroad. I cherish the Napier tourism faculty as great friends and associates. A particular highlight of my visiting professorship occurred when I was working in Hong Kong. Principal Prof Andrea Nolan led a Napier delegation to Hong Kong and hosted a ceilidh for students, graduates and supporters. Doing “strip the willow” and wearing a kilt in Hong Kong was certainly a special occasion for me as a then a resident of the territory. And of course, lots of valuable networking occurred worked out the logistics of Scottish dancing!

But where to start? As a professor of tourism, I love to connect people and places and it’s a joy to have an ongoing connection with my hometown and country. The tourism professors at Napier are a great group, and it has also been encouraging to witness the recruitment of junior faculty stars. I appreciate the level of engagement with the industry by the Tourism Research Centre and particularly with the festivals community. Napier also has a very international commitment which welcomes students and faculty from across the globe. I have appreciated my collaborations with Napier wherever in the world I have been based. I really enjoyed interacting with the Napier students during their time in College Station Texas. Our campus here is huge with more than 76,000 students in College Station alone and there are nine other campuses across our network. The football stadium (which I can see from my office) holds 105,000 spectators (even more for a recent music event)”