Preface

20 years of AIEST presidency (1994 2014): In fact, 20 important years, in which tourism has become an important topic in economy, politics, society and science. Not at least this was the result of Prof. Dr. Peter Keller, who pointed out on different occasions in the framework of its presidency of the AIEST, that only an adequate interplay of business, science, practice and policy copes with tourism needs. It leaps to the eye, that Prof. Dr. Peter Keller emphasized constantly the possibilities of interfaces between politics and science, on one hand as a political actor and manager of the Tourism Department of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) of Switzerland, on the other hand as a professor at the University of Lausanne. Moreover, it was Prof. Dr. Peter Keller, who put the basic issues and problems of the tourism industry in a nutshell and presented these in a macroeconomic context; furthermore he showed a high involvement in the Switzerland tourism promotion.