Our People

Professor John Lennon

Moffat Chair in Travel and Tourism Business Development

Professor John Lennon is the founding Director of the Moffat Centre and has full responsibility for all consultancy and research projects undertaken.

John is a well known commentator and academic who has an international reputation for practical and realisable tourism solutions. He has worked in more than 35 nations on more than 500 projects undertaking business development, research and consultancy in the South Pacific, the Caribbean, New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore, China, Nepal, India, Russia, Canada, USA, France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, South Africa, Malawi, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Baltic States.

He is a UK government accredited tourism consultant and acted as the Principal Advisor in the Scottish Government's All Party Tourism Inquiry (2008-2009). John has been a Specialist Policy Advisor to VisitScotland since 2003; he is a member of the Canadian Tourism Commissions International Marketing Board (Europe) and a Non-Executive Director of Historic Scotland.

John is a United Nations World Tourism Organisation recognised Tourism Consultant and has undertaken assignments for UNWTO, International Labour Organisation (ILO) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and is the author of seven books and over 100 research articles, numerous reports on the travel and tourism industry. As a Department of Trade and Industry accredited tourism consultant, he provides income generation, business and marketing support to attractions throughout the UK.

Tony Harrison

Senior Business Development Consultant

Tony brings a wealth of experience from the hospitality industry to his role as senior business development consultant. He has advised more than 50 tourism operators and has been a DTI accredited business advisor on key government intervention programmes and provided business start-up advice and feasibility studies for a number of potentially new tourism businesses.

At the destination level, he has delivered several area tourism strategies including the Yorkshire Wolds Product Development, East Yorkshire Coast Product Development Plan, Visit Hull & East Yorkshire Business Plan, Scottish Borders Tourism Plan, North West Highlands Geopark Marketing Plan and Ayrshire & Arran Tourist Board’s Information Strategy. 

Tony is particularly interested in tourism resource impacts and development, and has undertaken a number of studies including the Scottish Government’s Economic Impact of Windfarms on Scottish Tourism.  Overseas, he has recently provided tourism development advice to a range of municipalities in Lithuania and centrally through its Ministry of the Economy.  

On a personal level, Tony has a keen interest in sport and is on the board of directors of the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden Park.

Claire Bereziat

Commercial Research Manager

Claire Bereziat is our Commercial Research Manager and has some 10 years experience of carrying out research and consultancy. Claire’s expertise spans policy review and designing tailored methodologies to tackle research problems, e.g. tailored mixed-method consultation exercises with communities and public and private stakeholders and development of surveys.

Data is managed in-house using Teleform software; an efficient data capture package which enables us to process data efficiently and accurately, helping us produce fast analyses and reports for clients.

Claire’s qualitative research outputs have included literature reviews, elite interviews, policy reviews, scoping and exploration exercises and benchmarking and best practice reviews. She is fluent in French and Spanish which has extended the appeal of our expertise to overseas destinations and markets.

She has worked on a variety of visitor attraction projects providing research on catering, retail, interpretation and audience development and has led a number of economic impact assessments on events and has investigated the contribution of the museums and galleries sector towards the Scottish tourism economy.

Between 2001 and 2003 she compiled Sightseeing in the UK which brought together all national attractions data including data from Northern Ireland and she also managed and undertook national visitor attraction statistical compilations for Scotland, Wales and England.

Claire has worked on innovative research for VisitScotland in the shape of a tourism scenario planning project where she first became familiar with Idons Creative software (developed by Beesuccesful). She also led on the first phase of the EQUAL, European funded project, using this software to map cultural heritage in Lanarkshire and East Lothian, resulting in the identification of opportunities for new tourism networks.

In 2007, Claire was Acting Manager for the Kit-Out the Park project (Knowledge and Information Technology Out of University into Tourism). This successful project continues to deliver University technological advice and expertise to tourism-related SMEs in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Area.

Craig Wight

Business Development Consultant

Craig Wight is a Business Development Consultant within the team and has a background in hospitality and catering having worked as a chef and restaurant manager for Bowland Inns during most of the 1990s and having worked as a head chef in Airlie beach, Australia during 2001.

He has led a range of consultancy and research projects, most recently providing Visit Hull and East Yorkshire with a socio-economic impact analysis of the Freedom festival and a review of tourist information services throughout East Yorkshire . Craig has also advised both the Scottish and the UK National Tourism Organisations having undertaken an analysis of the structures and budgets of International NTOs for VisitBritain and having co-authored a scenario planning report with VisitScotland.

Craig has led on a number of socio-economic impact analyses and consultation exercises in Scotland and the UK. In 2009 he developed a tourism and hospitality strategy for West Dunbartonshire Council and between 2004 and 2007 he undertook socio-economic impact analyses of the Burns and A’ That festival in Ayrshire. He has had academic research published in the fields of visitor attractions, museum interpretation, ‘dissonant heritage’ in nation building and ‘culinary tourism’ and has presented at the National Association of Interpretation conferences in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2006 (on Lithuanian heritage) and Vancouver, Canada in 2007 (on network marketing in rural tourism). He continues to work on a part time basis towards a PhD in heritage studies.

Marina Martinolli

Project Manager

Marina manages the definitive Scottish publication of visitor trends – The Visitor Attraction Monitor – on behalf of VisitScotland.

In addition she produces the monthly Visitor Attraction Barometer, which analyses trends in over 500 participating visitor attractions in Scotland. The Bank of England use the Barometer as one of their economic monitoring tools, as they recognise the fast turnaround of information as invaluable.

Marina has forged strong links with attraction operators and has a unique understanding of issues and challenges facing the tourism industry in Scotland. Before taking charge of the annual and monthly reports, she worked with VisitWales, undertaking a similar exercise, collating information and mapping trends at 300 Welsh visitor attractions.

Prior to her involvement in visitor attraction research, she managed the co-ordination, delivery and running of the 5th International Forum on Tourism Statistics conference, a biennial conference where the OECD and Eurostat provide key players in the private and public sectors with a unique platform for the exchange of views and experiences on developments in tourism statistics.

She has also managed the Scottish Enterprise Tourism Network West Forums aimed at developing skills and knowledge within Tourism SMEs, as well as managing in-house award ceremonies.

• More information on the visitor attraction monitor and barometer
• Download the reports