Fevzi Okumuş

Professor Fevzi Okumus is the William McFall “Mac” Pearce Endowed Professor and the Director of Global Strategy and Strategic Engagement at the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management (HRSM) at the University of South Carolina. Until August 2025, Dr. Okumus was the Pegasus Professor and the Central Florida Hotel and Lodging Association (CFHLA) Preeminent Chair Professor within the Hospitality Services Department at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management. He was the Founding Chair of the Hospitality Services Department at UCF Rosen College. His main teaching and research areas include strategic management, leadership, hospitality management, services marketing, training, and lodging. He has served on and chaired/co-chaired numerous PhD dissertation and master thesis committees. He has over 340 academic publications (over 230 refereed journal articles, seven books, 12 book chapters, and 90 conference presentations and reports). As of August 10th, 2025, his publications have received 33,600 citations, and he has an h-index of 81. Prof. Okumus has been recognized as a “Highly Cited Researcher” in 2021; 2022; 2023; 2024 and 2025 by Clarivate, based on data from the Web of Science. Highly Cited Researchers™ are 1 in 1,000 of the world’s population of scientists and social scientists. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (IJCHM) (Impact Factor: 9.0) and the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights (JHTI) (Impact Factor: 4.8). He is also the Founding Editor of the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Horizons (JHTH), which has been recently launched in January 2025. He is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences. He has received numerous prestigious awards and recognitions including “The Michael D. Olsen Research Award” in 2016; “The University of Central Florida Scroll & Quill Society Award” in 2017, the “CFHLA Preeminent Professor” again in 2017, and the John Wiley & Sons Lifetime Research Achievement Award from ICHRIE in 2018. In April 2025, Prof. Okumus received the “Pegasus Professor” award at the University of Central Florida, which is the highest honor for a faculty member at UCF.