Photo:From left Professor Phillip Steele, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Campus Coordination and Campus Director for Berwick and Peninsula, Professor Edwina Cornish, Deputy Vice Chancellor & Vice President Research, Professor Betty Weiler, Professor Peter Forsyth, Deputy Director TRU and Dr Jim Curtis, Research Coordinator TRU.

TRU celebrates five years of research and industry collaboration

The Tourism Research Unit (TRU) at Monash University recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. TRU has grown from a modest number of tourism researchers largely based in the Departments of Management and Economics to approximately 35 academics, postdoctoral fellows and postgraduate researchers spanning three faculties, three schools, six departments and four Monash campuses.

With its main strengths in tourism economic modelling and visitor management research, TRU’s external funding has tripled in its five-year lifespan and now exceeds $1.3 million in total.       

“TRU is about people – we don’t have a lab, we have very little research equipment, and we barely have an office front, but we do have great people,” Professor Betty Weiler, Director of TRU said.

TRU reached an important milestone two years ago when it established a very high-level Advisory Board made up of representatives from national and Commonwealth government bodies such as the Tourism and Transport Forum,  Tourism Research Australia, state-based and state-wide organisations including Tourism Tasmania, Tourism Victoria, VECCI and Tourism Alliance, as well as local councils and several tourism operators.

The Advisory Board have provided very good advice to the TRU on how to communicate with current and potential research partners, forums for presenting research findings to industry and prioritising research needs.

“Researchers from TRU are known for their applied research work with industry, identifying projects as well as carrying them out in a way that helps industry. TRU is very effective at brokering relationships between postgraduate researchers and industry.

“TRU is very committed to long term relationships and therefore TRU members often do things with and for partners that are not necessarily profitable or even on the radar screen of what ‘counts’ as research. This has helped build trust and loyalty that has been a win-win for TRU and for organisations like Tourism Tasmania,” Jane Foley, Tourism Manager for the City of Melbourne and formerly from Tourism Tasmania said.