Dr. Dimitra Margieta Lykoudi holds a Ph.D. in Tourism Marketing and she is an Adjunct lecturer of Tourism Marketing at the University of Piraeus as well as a Visiting lecturer at the Agricultural University of Athens. To date she has contributed to the Tourism Marketing academia with studies in international journals, publications, book chapters and has also a solid participation in international conferences of Marketing, such as the European Marketing Academy Annual Conference (EMAC), where she is also a member. Her academic interests focus on destination marketing, destination experience, emotions in tourism and more specifically destination love.

Dr. Dimitra Margieta Lykoudi is a life-time explorer and traveler. Following a Ph.D. in Tourism Marketing was a journey of exploring an amazing, novel concept in academia and offering new research findings in the marketing and tourism fields. Her Ph.D. journey about destination love contributed to her self-expansion on an endless seeking of academic improvement as a researcher. The inspiration of her research topic was the amalgam of her studies and her personal experiences as a “drifter”. Her journeys to many different countries and cultures around the world triggered her desire to explore the emotions of tourists towards destinations, since stunning sunsets, divine landscapes, unique cultures and attractions as well as people of destinations she visited, contributed to broaden her horizons, enjoy life at its fullest, gain new experiences, and understand that happiness in life could stem not only from interpersonal relationships, but also from exploring destinations and experiencing strong emotions developed and triggered by them.

It is the experiences, the exploration of new customs and cultures, the seeking and discovery of ourselves, the memories, and the interpersonal interactions/relationships we achieve and gain through traveling that set the basis of our self-fulfillment. The Ph.D. experience itself was an amazing journey of her self-exploration as a tourism researcher as well. It was a trip full of academic challenges, achievements and enhancements.