Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt FRGS FRAS is an internationally recognized tourism expert and Director of the Meaningful Tourism Centre Ltd.; a non-profit organization headquartered in London and Kathmandu. The Centre integrates the COTRI China Outbound Tourism Institute and the MTG Meaningful Tourism Group, promoting sustainable and meaningful tourism development worldwide.

Born in West Berlin, Prof. Dr. Arlt holds an M.A. in Sinology, Sociology, and Political Sciences and earned a PhD in Political Economy from FU Berlin. With over five decades of engagement with China, he first visited the country in 1978 and has since become a leading authority on Chinese outbound tourism. From 1986, he organized specialized tourism programs to China and later facilitated business delegations across sectors such as energy, infrastructure, and education.

From 2002 to 2020, he served as Professor of International Tourism Management at German universities and as Visiting Professor in China, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. In 2006 he published the first monograph about the topic named China’s Outbound Tourism with Routledge, a new book The Return of Chinese Tourists will be published by Routledge in 2025.

Prof. Dr. Arlt is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Asiatic Society, the International Association of China Tourism Studies (Guangzhou) and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (Tokyo) and holds positions in several international organisations, including UN Tourism (Madrid), WTTC World Tourism and Travel Council (London), ETC European Tourism Commission (Brussels), WTCF World Tourism Cities Federation (Beijing), PATA Pacific Asia Travel Association (Bangkok), and others. He is also a Vice President of the EU-China Commission for Culture and Tourism and the Regional Vice President of ITSA International Tourism Studies Association for South Asia and Nepal.

Since 2021, Prof. Dr. Arlt has advanced the Meaningful Tourism paradigm as a holistic approach to sustainable tourism. He co-signed the New Magna Charta of Responsible Tourism with Prof. Harold Goodwin and the Glasgow Declaration. In 2024, he relocated to Nepal, merging COTRI and MTG under the Meaningful Tourism Centre Ltd., a non-profit based in London and Kathmandu.

Since 2024, he continues to work as a consultant, trainer, and keynote speaker in over 80 countries, contributing to major international projects and advancing responsible, meaningful tourism development worldwide.