Keynote on transport and logistics at destinations: Mai Elmar (chief marketing officer Municipality of Rotterdam)

The importance of transport and logistics in a service-experience economy

Mai Elmar was appointed chief marketing officer (CMO) for the City of Rotterdam in 2006. The CMO facilitates the city to effectively engage the international perspective, awareness and above all opportunities within the essence of Rotterdam as an international business centre. The primary objectives of the CMO include coordinating the city marketing efforts for the city, but for most to serve the clients of the city and the port in a best possible way. In essence, the Chief Marketing Office is aimed at creating an even better connection between municipal organisation en the business world. The Chief Marketing Office Rotterdam is a one-stop office for initial business contacts and prospects. Mai Elmar is also managing director of Cruise Port Rotterdam. She has been actively contributing to the image and reputation of Rotterdam throughout her career. She has received the Wolfert van Borselen medal from the City of Rotterdam for her contribution to the city. In 2005 Mai Elmar was also named  'Port man of the year 2004', an honour awarded by the port press club in recognition of distinguished contributions to the development of the Port of Rotterdam.

Keynote on global transport developments: Jaap de Wit (professor of transport economics University of Amsterdam)

 
Connecting and conserving the globe: dilemmas fot the airline indrustry

Jaap de Wit started his career as a transport economist at the Netherlands Railways after graduating at the Free University in Amsterdam. In 1984. After a period of working as an associate professor of transport economics at Delft University of Technology, he joined the Netherlands Department of Civil Aviation (Rijksluchtvaartdienst). Since then he has been involved in a wide range of policy and research issues in aviation. For example, on behalf of the Ministry of Transport he was the task force leader for the preparations of Amsterdam Airport privatisation and also economic regulator for the Dutch airports.

Jaap de Wit is professor of transport economics at the University of Amsterdam, where he teaches principles of transport economics and aviation economics. He is one of the co-founders of the Netherlands Aviation Academy, the international training institute for aviation management of the Universities of Leiden and Amsterdam and visiting professor at the IATA Academy for Strategic Management. He is a member of the steering committee for the International Air Transport Research Society, the advisory committee of the annual Hamburg aviation conference, the editorial boards of the Journal of Air Transport Management, Air Transportation, the Tijdschrift voor Vervoerwetenschap (Dutch Journal on Transport economics) and referee for the Journal of Transport Economics, Policy and Transportation. He is also director of Airneth, the international scientific and policy network for aviation, and has been guest lecturer at many scientific institutes all over the world. He is currently  involved in various international aviation projects.

Jaap de Wit leads the Amsterdam Aviation Economics Institute, affiliated to the University of Amsterdam. His research activities focus on airport finance and economics, airport privatisation, airport strategies, airport capacity analysis, airline deregulation and competition, the multimodal setting of aviation, airline forecasting and airline network developments. He is a specialist in economic regulatory issues in aviation, the European team leader for the Annual International Airport Benchmarking Study of the ATRS and aviation expert on the Dutch National Transport and Infrastructure Advisory Board. He frequently advises the Dutch government on national airport policy issues and has been involved in strategic development issues with regard to various airports all over the world. 

Keynote on ethical issues and sustainable development: Paul Peeters (associate professor of sustainable tourism and transport NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences)

Tourism, transport and climate change: ethical issues between ineffective and unwanted solutions

Paul Peeters is associate professor of sustainable Transport and Tourism at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences. He has specialized in environmental impacts of tourism transport in general and climate change in particular.  He has received training as an aircraft engineer at the Haarlem Polytechnic. After four years of aircraft preliminary design work at the Fokker Aircraft Company, he worked as a researcher at the Dutch Energy Research Agency (ECN) on wind turbines, and for seven years as a transport and environment consultant for Werkgroep 2000, a Dutch consultancy. In 1995 he started his own consultancy firm, Peeters Advies. He has written a large number of papers for academic journals, conference papers, book chapters and reports on tourism transportation, ecological footprints, eco-efficiency and the role of air transportation technology.

Keynote on ICT in tourism and transport: speaker will be announced later