Citation
Yeoman, I.S. (2017), "Dr Jeroen Oskam", Journal of Tourism Futures, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 102-102. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-09-2017-068
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Ian Seymour Yeoman
License
Published in the Journal of Tourism Futures. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
Dr Jeroen Oskam
I first met Jeroen Oskam on a wintery evening in Leeuwarden in 2010 just before Xmas. Jeroen had accepted the post of Programme Manager at the European Tourism Futures Institute (ETFI). This was the beginning of a friendship and an academic partnership. Jeroen working with Professor Albert Postma would establish the institute as the think tank for futures thinking in Europe, the first such one. Working on EU-funded projects for the Friesland region of the north of the Netherlands and beyond, ETFI created a consensus for futures thinking and scenario planning when sceptics wanted to focus on the present. The drive to change mental models was due to a great part because of Jeroen’s management and leadership within the institution. When the idea of a journal was mooted, it was Jeroen who could see the potential and vision that such a journal could create within the academic and practitioner’s communities of tourism. It was Jeroen with his political astuteness and diplomacy that enabled the journal to begin and provided a platform for its continued success.
Working with Jeroen and Albert resulted in the publication of The Future of European Tourism and guest editing a special issue of the Journal of Vacation Marketing on the future of hotels. In 2015, Jeroen eventually moved further afield to take up a new challenge at the HotelSchool, the Hague, as the Director of Research. This appointment reflected his research interest in the future of hotels and family reasons. Even there, he continued to support the journal and championing the cause. His research paper Airbnb: The Future of Networked Hospitality Businesses is the most downloaded paper from the Journal of Tourism Futures with over 35,000 downloads and 50 citations to date.
Jeroen has worked as the Director of MBA Hotel and Tourism Management at Hotelschool Maastricht and he continued his way to Spain, where he established Zaragoza Hotel Management School. He was part of the Management Team of Centre of Expertise Leisure, Tourism and Hospitality, a collaboration between NHTV Breda, Hogeschool Zeeland and Stenden. He is also a Visiting Professor at the EADA Business School in Barcelona and has a PhD from Universiteit van Amsterdam, reading the Sociology of Literature.
On the downside, I was never able to convince Jeroen about the virtues of Sunderland AFC but he did introduce me to SC Cambuur, who then played in Eredivise. It seemed Sunderland AFC was not quite up to FC Barcelona’s (Jeroen’s team) standards.
I have enjoyed working with Jeroen as the Co-editor of the Journal of Tourism Futures. Thank you for all the advice, wisdom, academic collegiately and friendship. We wish you well for the future.
Further readings
Oskam, J. (2016), “Airbnb: the future of networked hospitality businesses”, Journal of Tourism Futures, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 22-42.
Postma, A., Oskam, J. and Yeoman, I. (2013), The Future of European Tourism, Stenden University of Applied Sciences, Leeuwarden.
Yeoman, I., Oskam, J. and Postma, A. (2016), “The future of hotels: vacation marketing, service design and management”, Journal of Vacation Marketing, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 197-8.