Pete Varley is the founder and Director of the Centre for Recreation and Tourism Research in Scotland, and now Associate Professor of Marketing at Edinburgh Napier University. He is also a Visiting Researcher at Western Norway Research Institute, Sogndal.

Formerly (2009-2012) he was Head of the School of Adventure Studies at West Highland College UHI. Before moving to the wilds of Scotland, Pete spent 12 years as a senior lecturer in consumer studies, at the Department of Marketing and Retail Management in Manchester Metropolitan University Business School. There his interests centred upon the sociology of consumption, post-structuralist research approaches and postmodern consumer practices.

His current research interests include the following topics and writing projects:

• Reimagining hospitality
• Digital / social marketing solutions for tourism SME’s and destinations
• The impacts of events and festivals on destination brands
• Fuzzy places – the challenge of branding and multi-layered meanings of place
• Health and well-being in active leisure
• Food, gastronomy and taste in tourism
• The marketing of tourist experiences as emotional / service products
• Ethnographic and ethnomethodological research approaches to experiential inquiry
• The marketing, management and consumption of ‘wild’ places
• Slow movements, leisure and hypermodernity
• The role of storytelling and narratives in experiential marketing
• The concept of ‘Luxury’ in experiential marketing