Employability and Skills Development in the Sports, Events, and Hospitality Industry

Wendy Sealy is a destination and tourism product-marketing expert helping tourism businesses to increase their revenue yield. She is a motivational speaker and as an entrepreneur is the owner of Crystal Jewells. Dr. Sealy has been lecturing since 2005. Before joining the University of Chichester, she taught at the undergraduate and post-graduate level in Tourism Management at Buckinghamshire New University and at the postgraduate level in Sport and Event Management at the University of the West-Indies. Dr. Sealy graduated from the University of the West Indies with a first class honours degree in History and Sociology. She later completed her masters degree in Tourism Marketing with distinction at the University of Surrey and her Doctor of Philosophy degree with Brunel University, London. Dr. Sealy is responsible for coordinating the teaching, learning and research activities for the BA (Hons) Event Management within the Business School.She is responsible for employer-student engagement activity and the co-ordination of live event projects under the provision of the event management degree programme. Wendy is particularly interested in the experiences of event management students in higher education and has spent a considerable amount of time conducting research and publishing work in this area. She is the creator of the Event Management Body of Skills (EMBOS) model for event management education, published in Event Management – an International Journal. Her other interest involves experimenting with different ways to embed employability into the students’ higher education experiences in order to ensure that they can compete for jobs at graduation. She is also the Associate Editor of the Journal of Tourism and Sustainability and a member of the editorial committee of the Journal of International Tourism and Hospitality.Dr. Sealy has published her research in several academic journals and books including the Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, the Journal of Travel Research and The International Journal on Tourism and Sustainability.

Emma Delaney has 25 years’ experience as an event management practitioner and an academic. This includes working in visitor attractions, theatres and local authorities and delivering events for a variety of clients including political parties, the TUC and the NHS. Emma has a first degree in languages, from The University of Wales, Trinity St David and both her MA in Education (with distinction) and PhD were awarded from the University of Chichester. Emma is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey within the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management. Emma’s publications include Working with Venues for Events (under the name Emma Nolan, Routledge, 2018) and her current research interests are centered on the MICE sector. She is particularly interested in destination competitiveness for MICE events and the site selection process in the organisation of international association conferences.