Tom Baum is Programme Director, Hong Kong University SPACE programmes in Tourism and Hospitality Management at the University of Strathclyde. His research agenda includes: people and work in low skills service work, with a particular focus on the international hospitality and tourism sector as well as human resource development and skills planning and formation, education and training, at a macro (national) and company level.

Richard Butler is a geographer (Nottingham and Glasgow Universities), and taught for thirty years at the University of Western Ontario (Canada) and then at the University of Surrey. He has published eighteen books on tourism and over a hundred journal articles and chapters. His main areas of research are tourism destination development, and the sustainability of tourism. He is a former President of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism and of the Canadian Association for Leisure Studies.