About Jess Ponting

Dr. Jess Ponting specializes in the use of sustainable tourism for community development. He has been particularly active as a researcher/consultant in equatorial Asia-Pacific, most recently as member of the World Commission on Protected Areas, and as a consultant for Fiji’s Tourism Master Plan. His areas of interest include sustainable tourism, surfing tourism, cross cultural interactions in tourism, the social construction of tourist spaces, and volunteer tourism. He is currently researching peak experiences in surfing tourism, hermeneutic circles of representation and surfing tourism, volunteering as a decommodified tourism experience, and the interface between traditional systems of reef resource ownership and sustainable marine tourism in the Pacific Islands.