Leonardo (Dr. Dioko) A.N. Dioko, Ph.D.
Dr. Dioko is Professor and currently Director of Research at the Institute for Tourism Studies, Macao (IFT). Dr. Dioko is also a sitting member on both the scientific and technical councils of IFT as well as the Institute for European Studies of Macao (IEEM). Until recently, Dr. Dioko was Coordinator for Studies at IFT, a role in which he chaired or co-chaired the Institute’s tourism college faculty and various committees. As Professor, Dr. Dioko teaches at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels principally in the areas of management and marketing with particular emphasis on research methods, consumer behavior, tourism and hospitality marketing, service quality and strategic management. He has taught on visiting or guest appointments at Hong Kong University SPACE, Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Inter-University Institute of Macao, and the Institute for European Studies of Macao.
Dr. Dioko obtained his doctorate degree in management from the Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE), in Lisbon, Portugal. He has a master’s of science degree from the University of Macao in the field of marketing, and obtained his bachelor’s degree in business administration at the College of Business at the University of the Philippines (Diliman).
As Director of Research at IFT, Dr. Dioko actively conducts, organizes, and coordinates various research or policy studies or programs principally commissioned by the Macao SAR Government. These have included, among others, studies investigating Macao’s tourism carrying capacity and sustainability issues with implications for visitor and tourism management strategies; program assessments of various sporting and major events aimed at attracting visitors; residents’ and visitors’ opinions on a host of tourism- and heritage-preservation related issues; strategic manpower planning and forecasting for Macao’s tourism industry; image, attitude as well as destination choice and behavior studies of visitors; and economic and competitive profiling of rival regional tourism destinations.
Dr. Dioko’s personal research interest covers destination branding and marketing issues, heritage tourism, visitor management at destinations and attractions, the behavior and psychology of travelers, and tourism carrying capacity strategies for destinations. Dr. Dioko is an active collaborator with UNESCO’s Asian Academy for Heritage Management, especially in relation to developing and training Cultural Heritage Specialist Guides in various countries in the region. Dr. Dioko also regularly engages in consulting or applied research with various tourism-related organizations in Macao.