Dr. Albert Postma Email & Phone Number

Dr. Albert Postma (1962) is professor of applied sciences in transformative foresight at NHL Stenden University, European Tourism Futures Institute (www.etfi.eu). He has a background in Social Geography and did his BSc, MSc and PhD at the University of Groningen, faculty of Spatial Sciences. Since 1990 he has been lecturing at bachelor and master’s level. Initially in the domain of research methodology and statistics, later in monitoring and evaluation, destination marketing, eventually in sustainability and quality of life, and currently in strategic foresight and scenario planning. From 1999 till 2010 Postma has been leading the MA International Leisure and Tourism Studies. Postma has been involved in applied research for the leisure and tourism industry since the early 1990s, initially mainly in the marketing of cities and regions, and in monitoring and evaluation. A milestone has been the initiation of Toerdata Noord, a monitoring system for supply and demand of tourism, commissioned by the three northern provinces of the Netherlands. Personal interest in the domain of social sustainability resulted in a PhD thesis (“When the tourists flew in”; critical encounters in the development of tourism, 2013) in which he studied residents’ perspectives towards tourism development. Since 2014 he has applied the outcomes of his thesis in several overtourism studies by #CELTH and #Stenden ETFI, partly in collaboration with UN World Tourism Organization. In 2010 Postma was appointed professor in strategic foresight & scenario planning at the European Tourism Futures Institute, Academy of Leisure & Tourism at NHL Stenden University. In this position he is responsible for foresight education at the Academy, for the research programme of the research group, and for various future related projects for the leisure and tourism industry in the Netherlands and elsewhere and beyond. Nationally and internationally, Postma is frequently invited to provide keynote presentations at industry and academic conferences, and to give creative workshop sessions to representatives of the sector. He is co-editor of the book The Future of European Tourism and of the Journal of Tourism Futures by Emerald. He authored the book Scenario Planning and Tourism Futures together with Stefan Hartman and Ian Yeoman, which was published December 2024. Since 2010 his focus has evolved from scenario planning, along foresight and strategic foresight to transformative foresight on leisure, tourism and hospitality by the end of 2024.

Listed skills include Tourism, Sustainable Tourism, Research, Teaching, and 3 others.