Dr Laura Lesar

Dr. Laura Lesar is Senior Lecturer. She holds a multi-disciplinary background in environmental studies, sustainability, and tourism. Laura’s expertise is in the practical quality control tools (“tools”) that enable tourism providers to build their sustainability and resilience, such as certification programs, sustainability indicators, net zero initiatives, adaptation strategies, capacity building training tools, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. Through industry consultation and review of international best practice, her research has produced practical outcomes for industry, including 100+ tools that tourism businesses can use to build their sustainability and resilience, a framework for tool selection, and a replicable method for co-creating customized sustainable tourism toolkits with industry.

Also dedicated to research excellence, all Laura’s peer-reviewed research on quality control tools is published in internationally leading tourism journals of the highest ranking (A* ABDC, Top 5% SJR). She received the Early Career Researcher Excellence Award at Flinders, awarded to just one early career researcher within the multi-disciplinary College of Business, Government, and Law. Laura also serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Travel Research (A*), and received the journal’s inaugural Best Reviewer Award (Early Career Reviewer) in 2023.

Laura embraces opportunities for industry engagement. She has worked on sustainability and tourism projects globally in the USA, Australia, Southeast Asia, and South America for public, private, and non-profit organisations, including Royal Caribbean Intl., Expedia, Gemtree Wines, City and County of Honolulu, Experience Gold Coast, Chilean Government’s Environmental Commission, Etheridge Shire Council, Hostelling Intl., and Murweh Shire.

Laura has facilitated numerous inivted presentations, workshops, and keynotes in the USA and Australia. Among them, she was an invited Speaker for the U.S. Department of State’s East-West Professional Fellows Program, Sustainable Tourism Speaker and Panellist for the World Tourism Summit in Hawai’i, USA, and the Keynote Speaker at the International Conference on Tourism and Entrepreneurship.