Dr. Flora Maria Diaz-Perez is Senior Lecturer at La Laguna University (ULL)>   She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Management and a Ph.D. from ULL. She is chief of the research group “Turismo. Competitiveness and Sustainability”, which has a long trajectory in the research line on market segmentation and environmental policy and obtained the Prize for Socioeconomic Research in Applied Economics presented by the World Biosphere Reserve of La Palma.

She has been an expert of the General Directorate of Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission, EU, 2013-2016-, based on the areas of expertise: transfer of knowledge, competitiveness, innovation, gender and small and medium-sized enterprises. This trajectory has allowed it to be selected twice as a success group in R+D+i by the media (https://www.ull.es/portal/noticias/2019/el-grupo-de-la-ull-sobre-competitividad-y-sostenibilidad-en-turismo-seleccionado-por-el-mundo-entre-diez-casos-de-exito-en-idi/), and receiving a letter of congratulations from the President of the Government of the Canary Islands. Recent research includes collaborating with researchers at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management (UCF). The group has several international publications:  1)Rural tourism networking and covid-19 crisis: a gender perspective, Service Business (2022) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-022-00503-x;   2)Florida state parks: A CHAID approach to market segmentation, Anatolia (2021) https://doi.org/10.1080/13032917.2020.1856158;   3)Accommodation, Seasonality and Domestic Tourism to National Parks: Implications for Environmental Policy, Sustainability (2021) https://doi.org/10.3390/su13095072;   4)The use of the CHAID algorithm for determining tourism segmentation: A purposeful outcome Heliyon (2020)  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04256;  5)CHAID algorithm as an appropriate analytical method for tourism market segmentation. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdmm.2016.01.006;   6)The segmentation of Canary Island tourism markets by expenditure: implications for tourism policy. Tourism Management  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2004.06.009