Your Publisher and Coach

Let me introduce myself. I’m Michael (K. Michael Haywood).

I’ve been engaged in hospitality and tourism virtually all my life. Interests that started by learning about hosting, hospitality and entertaining from my parents. 

It was the move from England to Nassau in the Bahamas that galvanized my interest in tourism.  The place where I became immersed in the tropicality of Caribbean destinations, which led to a degree in hospitality and tourism management followed by one in economics and a M.B.A. specializing in marketing.  

While working in a variety of resorts and hotels located across the Caribbean and Canada (notably for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts), followed by stints at the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and in the catering industry, I gained valuable exposure to various management practices.

At the time I had no interest in teaching, but an offer to become the initial director of a tourism management program at a community college in Toronto fascinated me. Shortly after, the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada) recruited me to join, what is now, the School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management, where I spent the next thirty years.

During this time I completed the course requirements for a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning (with a focus on tourism); however, life-altering circumstances regrettably forced me to abandon my thesis, though the research sharpened my interest in community-based tourism.  

As Professor, and Director of the School for a number of years, I researched and published extensively on various managerial topics related to hospitality (hotel and foodservice) and tourism management, which eventually led to becoming the second person to earn the John Wiley and Sons Award for Excellence in Hospitality and Tourism Research.

Over the course of my career I’ve always been active as a consultant.  I formed two boutique hospitality/tourism consultancies specializing in strategic management and gained valuable knowledge from a wide range of projects for governments, universities, corporate clients and other consulting firms.

Upon retiring from university life I served as Vice-President Hospitality for a leading retirement home corporation, but never gave up on the habit of writing.  Now, with my e-book Astonish! Smarter Tourism by design completed, I wondered: What good is a book about transforming communities-as-destinations unless it could be used to help build and support a community or a coalition of practitioners and professors.

After all, if meaningful progress and transformation is to occur at community and destination levels, a movement of dedicated and engaged individuals has to gain momentum…requiring the formation of Destination-in-Action Networks with exemplary minds focused on achieving structural, strategic and behavioral breakthroughs.

On a more personal note, I am a Canadian of British decent now residing in the bucolic Eastern Townships of Quebec, close to Montreal.  When not writing or traveling, most of my time is spent outside tending to my country gardens, which are always on view when ensconced in what is now my Tourism Studio.