Dimitris Koutoulas
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Dr. Dimitris Koutoulas, with a degree in Business Administration and a Ph.D. in Tourism Marketing, has been working as a marketing consultant in the tourism, hotel, event and publishing industries. He has implemented assignments in 24 countries on behalf of private and public-sector clients and partners from Greece, Germany, the Netherlands, Cyprus, the UK, the USA, Spain, Belgium, the United Arab Emirates, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, Oman, Hungary, Turkey etc. His consultation appointments include business and marketing planning, research and other assignments on behalf of Ministries, National and Regional Tourism Organisations, Convention Bureaux, the European Union, the Athens Olympic Games Organising Committee, Chambers of Commerce, Industry Associations as well as multinational companies and other businesses.
Dimitris also has a long hands-on experience in marketing tourist destinations and individual businesses through designing and implementing integrated marketing campaigns, publicity campaigns and public relations activities and producing travel and hotel guides, websites and audio books.
Dimitris has participated in several hotel and restaurant rating projects both in Greece and abroad. These projects include the design and review of star classification systems, hotel quality assessments through mystery guest inspections and other techniques, design of hotel award schemes etc. He has inspected and assessed hundreds of hotels and restaurants in eight countries.
In addition, Dimitris has been working as an event producer. He has organised, among others, concert tours throughout the world, opera performances and large-scale mega events designed by Gert Hof such as the Athens Millennium celebration at the Acropolis, the Expo 2000 event at Ferropolis in Germany and the world's largest corporate event with the christening of the cruise ship AIDAdiva in Hamburg in 2007.
Dr. Koutoulas has been teaching Tourism Marketing as well as Tourism and Hotel Management at the University of the Aegean, the Hellenic Open University and the University of Macedonia since 2002. He has been elected Assistant Professor of Tourism Management at the Department of Business Administration of the University of Patras in 2010. He also teaches marketing at the Greek National School of Public Administration.
As part of his academic work, Dr. Koutoulas has conducted several research projects about tourism and the hotel industry and has published research papers in refereed journals, edited books and congress proceedings. He has been invited as a speaker to dozens of conferences in Greece and abroad and he has published articles in trade media.