Keynote speakers

Assoc. Prof. Giacomo Del Chiappa

University of Sassari

Giacomo Del Chiappa, (PhD) is Associate Professor of Marketing at the Department of Economics and Business, University of Sassari (Italy), where he teaches “Tourism Marketing and Management”, “Destination Management and Digital Marketing Lab” and “Service and Retail Marketing”. He is also Senior Research Fellow at the School of Tourism & Hospitality of University of Johannesburg (South Africa). Giacomo has covered the role of scientific coordinator of the Competence Center “Advanced Robotics and enabling digital Technology and Systems – ARTES 4.0”, University of Sassari. He has also acted as the co-chair of the Tourism, Culture and Arts Marketing SIG of the Italian Marketing Association, where he currently sits in the Board of Directors. Yet, he is Associate Researcher, National Research Council (CNR) – Institute for Studies on the Mediterranean.           
His research is related to destination governance and branding, tourism marketing, hotel marketing, tourism sustainability, consumer/tourist behavior, services marketing, retail and digital marketing.
He is Co-editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Tourism Research and member of numerous editorial boards of national and international scientific journals. He is author and co-author of around 200 national and international publications. Among others, he has published in: Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Service Management, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, International Journal of Contemporary and Hospitality Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management. He regularly teaches in PhD programs, Masters and EMBA in Italy and abroad in the areas of consumer behavior, tourist behavior, destination management and hospitality marketing and management.

Prof. Stanislav Ivanov

Varna University of Management

Stanislav Ivanov (PhD) is a Professor in Tourism Economics and Vice-Rector (Research) at Varna University of Management and Director of Zangador Research Institute. He is the founder and the Editor-in-chief of two academic journals: the European Journal of Tourism Research (indexed in Scopus and Web of Science) and ROBONOMICS: The Journal of the Automated Economy. Additionally, he serves on the editorial and review boards of over 30 other journals. He authored over 200 publications (booksbook chaptersarticlesconference reportsbook reviews, and industry reports) in the field of robonomics, robotics, artificial intelligence and service automation, hotel marketing, hotel chains, pricing and revenue management, destination marketing and management, tourism’s impact on economic growth, political issues in tourism.

Professor Ivanov keeps close links with the tourism business. He has been several times lecturer at the largest events for tourism professionals in Bulgaria – Travel AcademyHotel Investment Forum, and Destination Varna. Through ZangadorLtd., he conducts trainings in Hotel marketing, Pricing and revenue management, Marketing audit, etc., implements marketing research projects, and prepares specialized analyses and reports for various companies. He has specialised in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Norway, Cyprus, USA, Italy.

Laurent Picheral

Group Solidarity Officer of ACCOR

Laurent Picheral is Accor’s Group Solidarity Officer and a corporate executive with more than 30 years of experience in: Hospitality, Governance, Finance, IMO, external & internal Audit, Asset Management as well as ESG projects leads. He has deep insight into Hospitality business in Europe with focus on Central & Eastern Europe and is an expert for bringing business operations back on track and implementing change of business model with positive financial, HR and ESG impacts.
He is a graduate of EDHEC Business School and started his career in 1989 with KPMG in France and Poland, holding various positions and dealing with key industrial and corporate government projects. In 1995 he became a Senior Manager in France and Operational Senior Manager in Central Europe for Salustro Reydel Paris.         
He joined Accor in 2000 where he held high-ranking positions from: Director of Internal Group Audit (2000), Finance Director of Accor Hotellerie Deutschland GmbH (2003), Managing Director in charge of Finance Tax, Legal Affairs and IT for Germany (2006), to CEO of Orbis S.A. in Poland (2010) and culminated with the appointment to ACCOR SA, as a Group Executive Committee Member (2014) by taking over responsibility for around 500 hotels in Central and Eastern Europe. In January 2016 he additionally took over the formal position as Head of AccorHotels Germany. In 2017 he supported the team work of building up of AccorInvest assets company as well as the governances and processes between AccorInvest and AccorHotels, on top of the main responsibilities as Deputy CEO Europe for AccorHotels and CEO for the AccorHotels perimeter in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. From 2018, as Executive Committee member, he was nominated Accor Group Chief Transformation Officer, especially focused on integration of newly acquired by Accor companies.     
From mid-2020 onwards, he took over the responsibilities to structure Solidarities actions within the Accor group, especially during the Covid pandemic crisis, managing, among others, the All Heartist Fund worldwide. Since 2014, he became a member of the Supervisory Board of Solidarity Accor Foundation, member of Glion high Education hospitality School Advisory Board in Switzerland as well as, leading the Advisory Board of IESEG business School Incubator and regularly animating business angels supports.