Dr. Laitamaki is a global academic and expert in strategy, marketing, branding, sustainability and entrepreneurship with special focus on international hospitality, tourism and service industries. He has over 30 years of higher education and consulting experience in over 20 countries on six continents and at the United Nations. Dr. Laitamaki has worked as a management consultant with Service Management Group and McKinsey & Company, and as a professor at U.C. Berkeley, Fordham University and New York University. At Fordham he built and directed Global Professional MBA (GPMBA) Program with 140 students from 40 countries. Newsweek recognized GPMBA as one of the top seven international MBA Programs in the U.S. At New York University Dr. Laitamaki teaches Strategy Formulation, Business Development and Brand Management. He lectures and conducts research in global and competitive strategy, Blue Ocean and brand strategy, customer and brand experience management, entrepreneurship, and sustainability. Dr. Laitamaki’s research has been published in several international conferences and journals including European Management Journal, California Management Review and Journal of Transnational Management. He is a contributor on tourism policy for the text book Travel and Tourism: An Industry Primer by Prentice Hall. Dr. Laitamaki’s recent research on sustainability of Cuban tourism industry was published in the Managing Global Transitions International Research Journal, and his research on Cuban UNESCO sites was published at the THoR 2017 Sustainable Tourism Conference in Singapore. 

Publications

• Marriott International: How to Reach Generation Z with ESG? By The Case Centre (Sep 16 2024)
• Sustainable Tourism Strategy of Suomenlinna UNESCO World Heritage Site By The Case Centre (Oct 14 2023)
• The Next Generation Cruise Ships Searching for the Blue Ocean By The Case Centre (Mar 05 2020)
• Sustainable Tourism in Cuban UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Focus on Historic City Centers By International Conference on Tourism THOR 2017 (Oct 09 2017)
• Article on Globalization of Destination Management Organizations By Finnish Journal of Tourism Research (Nov 01 2008)
• Chapter on Travel and Tourism: An Industry Primer Chapter on Governments and Politics By John Wiley & Sons (Jan 01 2008)
• Article on Customer Value Added By European Management Journal (Apr 01 1997)
• Article on Borderless Service Designs By Journal of Transnational Management (Jun 01 1996)
• Article on Total Quality Research By California Management Review (Sep 01 1995)