Having dedicated over 20 years of my professional and academic career to researching tourism and cruises, I have documented my findings and discussed their implications from a variety of perspectives. Ultimately, my aim has been to educate and inform the public on this domain of business and leisure activity, which impacts many lives and communities.

To have an impact, tourism and cruise research needs to be accessible and attractive to a wider audience! Yet, my occasional quote in the press or brief radio soundbite only scratches the surface.

The polarised public debate does not capture the complexity and interdependencies of the cruise tourism system, which extend well beyond the actual vessel, nor does it support the evolution of pragmatic solutions. Besides my scientific publication activity over the last decades, I have also often spoken publicly in the press and at various conferences. At the end of the day, if research is to have an impact, it needs to be accessible and attractive to a wider audience, while going into more depth than the occasional quote or soundbite allows.

AI tools now offer the possibility to effortlessly compile and summarise this accumulated knowledge into compact, digestible, and more entertaining formats than the average scientific paper. Using Google’s NotebookLM, I trained a “mini-Papathanassis” model by uploading my presentations and research work. These sources form the basis of the short AI-generated podcasts below, summarising key aspects and addressing some of the central questions in cruise tourism.

Instead of reading my research and attending my speeches, you can simply hear it as an AI-generated podcast!