About us
Being at the forefront of tourism, events and the hospitality industry for over 20 years, Koutoulas Consulting has been assisting public and private-sector clients in designing and implementing winning strategies and marketing campaigns. With its activities spanning four continents, Koutoulas has offered advice and project management solutions to the following sectors:
Tourism
Hospitality
Events
Athens-based Koutoulas Consulting is the advisory firm of Dr. Dimitris Koutoulasand utilizes an international network of experts and highly specialized firms covering nearly every aspect of strategic planning, marketing, branding, product development, hotel operations, human resource management as well as event productions.
About me
Dr. Dimitris Koutoulas is an internationally established tourism and hospitality marketing expert. Spending his time mostly between Greece, Germany and Cyprus, he calls the world his home as he has implemented projects in 31 countries. Fluent in Greek, German and English, he holds a university degree in Business Administration and a PhD in tourism marketing.
Dimitris made his foray into project management while still at high school and completed his first major marketing campaign on behalf of a German publishing house before graduating university. The early professional success encouraged him to focus his career on business consulting and project management mostly in the event and publishing sectors. However, thanks to his passion for travel he gradually developed a significant project portfolio in tourism and hospitality.
Dr. Koutoulas is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Patras in Greece. He has also taught and lectured at universities in Greece, Austria, Germany and South Africa. His research work and teaching focuses on strategic management, tourism and service marketing, destination marketing and DMO management, hospitality management, hotel marketing, event management as well as MICE, cultural and culinary tourism.
Dimitris has a long hands-on experience in marketing both individual businesses and tourist destinations. He has conducted market research, strategic planning as well as branding and rebranding projects and he has implemented nearly every aspect of integrated marketing communications such as designing websites and social media campaigns, conducting above-the-line advertising and below-the-line promotions, setting up and operating press offices, producing content etc. He has organized press trips and fam trips, represented businesses and destinations at international tourism trade fairs and authored travel and hotel guides about Greece.
Dimitris has participated in several hotel star rating and certification projects, hotel quality assessments through mystery guest inspections, hotel awards etc. He has inspected and assessed hundreds of hotels and restaurants in ten countries.
Earlier in his career, Dimitris has worked extensively as an event producer. He has organised concert tours, opera performances and mega events around the world including, for instance, the Athens Millennium celebration at the Acropolis, the Hugo Boss Fashion Week Party in Berlin and the christening of Carnival’s cruise ship AIDAdiva in Hamburg, which is the world’s largest corporate event to date. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, Mikis Theodorakis, The Scorpions, Gert Hof, Mike Oldfield, Manos Hadjidakis, Milva, Westbam, George Dalaras and Mercedes Sosa are some of the artists Dimitris has worked for.
More recently, Dimitris has grown his professional training portfolio by conducting seminars and masterclasses on three continents. He has trained thousands of tourism and hospitality industry professionals ranging from frontline employees to general managers and entrepreneurs. He is conducting in-house training at hotels and DMOs and he has created his highly successful “Hotel Management Masterclass” and “Destination Marketing Bootcamp”series. He has been a mentor and a career coach to a growing number of professionals and entrepreneurs.
Being an experienced, high-energy professional speaker, Dimitris has delivered hundreds of presentations, speeches and keynotes. He has been invited to numerous tourism and hospitality industry conferences, scientific congresses and university lectures and has been quoted and interviewed by international media such as the BBC and Deutsche Welle.