CQUniversity has appointed its first Senior Lecturer in Tourism based on the Mackay campus.

Steve Noakes comes from Griffith University where he has been teaching in a number of tourism courses, including Tourism Enterprise Management, Destination Marketing and Tourism Management.

Steve Noakes - LINK for a larger image

From the late 1970's to the late 1980's, Steve was active in tourism throughout the Whitsundays and the Mackay region, first as a tour guide on camping safaris and later involved in mainland and island resorts, yachting vacations and cruise ship management.

With an active industry background, he has served on the Boards of Tourism Whitsundays, Gold Coast Tourism and the Cairns-based Tourism Tropical North Queensland, where he also served as General Manager in the mid 1990's, leading the destination and organisational rebranding for the Far North region.

He has also been a member of Boards/Committees/Councils of the Association of Australian Convention Bureaux, the Australian Tourism Export Council, the Australian Federation of Travel Agents and the Bangkok-based Pacific Asia Travel Association.

In 2008, he was awarded the inaugural Ecotourism Australia ‘Ecotourism Medal' for his extensive 30 years of involvement in the nature-based tourism industry and his commitment to the broader sustainable tourism agenda.

With a wide range of tourism industry engagement across the Asia Pacific region, his strategic linkages include the Board of the Washington DC-based Global Sustainable Tourism Council, the Global Panel of Experts within the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, the World Committee on Tourism Ethics and the International Labour Organisation.

A strong advocate for creating linkages between industry and academia, Steve has served as an Adjunct Professor in Tourism at the University of Queensland and continues in that role at Griffith University in Queensland.

CQUniversity's new Tourism degrees will be available at Mackay and Noosa campuses, as well as by distance education.