ProfRoya Rahimi

Roya is a Professor in Marketing and Leisure Management at the University of Wolverhampton (UoW) and a Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy. She has a strong track record in securing large-scale grants and leading impactful and multidisciplinary research projects, both nationaly with UK Research Councils (That's me and Elevate) and internationally (AI4Labour) with funders such as H2020. Roya also has experience of working with government to secure commercial funding, successfully leading projects that bridge academic research with policy priorities and industry needs.

Roya is the REF co-coordinator (UOA17) at the Business School, where she played a crucial role in compiling the UoA17 submission for REF 2021, which included more than 70 outputs, two case studies, and the environment statement. Her efforts contributed to a significant increase in the GPA compared to REF 2014. She is currently working with the REF Strategy Panel at the UoW and preparing for the UoA17 for REF 2029.

In 2022, she established and currently leads the Marketing Research Hub (MRH) within the Business School, where she supports and leads a team of marketing researchers at various stages of their careers, setting research priorities and fostering interdisciplinary research and collaboration. Through her close collaboration with the British Academy of Management (BAM), MRH is now officially recognized as the marketing hub of BAM for West Midlands. She has chaired and organized two annual conferences for MRH, one of which was in collaboration with BAM. She is the Research Capacity Developer of the Marketing and Retail Special Interest Group (SIG) at the British Academy of Management (BAM) and there is a close collaboration between the SIG and the MRH.

She is the founder and director of the Visiting Scholar Scheme (VSS) within the faulty. Since founding the scheme in 2015, she has coordinated the visits of more than 50 scholars from various parts of the world. These visits have created numerous opportunities for international collaborations and research projects for the faculty and have also contributed to income generation for the University.

In the 2018-2019 academic year, Roya was the Head of the Management Research Centre, where she played a key role in reviewing the faculty's research strategy and writing the equality and diversity action plan, which led to a significant increase in the number of female scholars. She was also responsible for overseeing all the research clusters and ensuring that the Research Centre aligned with the university's aims, objectives, and values.

She has a national and international reputation and holds multiple roles on academic networks, associations, and journal editorial boards, contributing to the academic and professional community. She is Associate Editor of Tourism and Hospitality Insight , Associate Editor for The International Journal of Tourism Cities (IJTC) and Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology. She was Associate Editor for the Journal of Tourism Management Perspectives (2016-2020). In 2017, she served as the guest editor for a special issue on Sustainability in Tourism and Hospitality for the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (3*), and she was the book review editor for the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Management (2016-2019). She was the regional editor (Europe) for the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights between 2015 and 2018.

Roya chaired the 5th International Managing Tourism Across Continents (MTCON) Conference in 2025, which was held in Istanbul and attracted over 600 participants from 50 countries. She has now been appointed to chair the 6th MTCON Conference, scheduled to take place in Antalya in 2026, with the aim of expanding the conference’s global reach and impact even further.

She has been invited as keynote speaker to number of national and international conferences. She is a Fellow of the Peer Review College within the BAM, where she promotes research excellence through high-quality feedback and selection for BAM grants, conferences, and the broader business and management community.

Her peer-reviewed papers consistently get published in leading academic journals in their field, with over 40 papers published so far (h-index 22). Most of her published works have appeared in top-tier journals with impact factors of 3 or 4, indicating the importance of their contributions to the field. Moreover, her research has extended beyond the academic circle, with its usage and citations in a broader community, and influencing marketing practices in the industry.

Roya is the editor of eight successfully published books:

1. The Ethics of AI in Hospitality and Tourism Challenges and Opportunities ( 2026-Routlage)
2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Tourism, Hospitality and Events (2025-Goodfellow)
3. Contemporary Marketing Management for Tourism and Hospitality: How New Tech and Gen Z Drive Sustainable Business Transformation (2024- Springer)
4. Smart Cities and Tourism: Co-creating experiences, challenges, and opportunities. (2022- Goodfellow)
5. The Sharing Economy and the Tourism Industry; Perspectives, Opportunities, and Challenges (2022- Goodfellow)
6. Generation Z marketing and management in tourism and hospitality: the future of the industry (2021 -Springer)
7. Big Data and Innovation in Tourism, Travel, and Hospitality: Managerial Approaches (2019-Springer)
8. Promotional Strategies and New Service Opportunities in Emerging Economies (2017 - IGI Global)

Her research interests include Digital Capacity Development, Consumer Behaviour, CRM, Big Data/Artificial Intelligence, and Sustainable Marketing, particularly in the tourism and hospitality context. She has 8 years of mentorship experience, both internationally through the Cara Program and nationally as a member of the British Academy Researcher Network.  To date, she has successfully supervised four PhD students to completion and is currently supervising another six. She has been invited to externally examine several PhD dissertations both internally and nationally.