Sofia holds a PhD in Tourism from the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning (IGOT) at Universidade de Lisboa, and a degree in Business Communication. Currently, she is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Technologies, Universidade Europeia. Professor in the areas of Tourism and Hospitality Marketing; Digital Communication and social media; Brand Management; Digital Marketing and Events Management. Currently, she is also Coordinator of Tourism Management Master and also Director of Tourism and Hospitality area.

Her research focuses on the areas of hotel management, networks, hotel marketing consortia, tourism marketing, and lately her research interest is about the impacts of Sustainability in the tourism sector. Sofia is author of several international research articles, book chapters, participation in dictionaries and encyclopedias in the tourism and hospitality management sector. She is also speaker and event organizer in the tourism area. Likewise, she is training, consultant, and part of numerous international projects in the tourism sector.

Main Publications: 

Almeida,, Morgado, P. S., Costa, C., Simões, J. M., & Seabra, C. (2023). Revealing cooperative behaviour arrangements within hotel marketing consortia. Tourism Management Perspectives, 46, 101089. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2023.101089

Díaz, E., Esteban, Á., Koutra, C., Almeida, S., & Carranza, R. (2023). Co-creation of value in smart ecosystems: past trends and future directions in tourism literature. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 14(3), 365-383 https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTT-04-2021-0122

Seabra C., Almeida S, Reis M. (2022) Quality-of-Life Perception among Young Residents and Visitors: The Impact of COVID-19. Sustainability. 2022; 14(23):16177 https://doi.org/10.3390/su142316177

Almeida, S., Costa, C., & Simões, J. (2022) Types of affiliation in the hotel sector – an insight into the Portuguese experience. European Journal of Tourism Research, 32, 3206. https://doi.org/10.54055/ejtr.v32i.2934

Almeida, S., Mesquita, S., & Carvalho, I. (2022) The Covid-19 impacts on the hospitality? Highlights from the industry experts, Tourism and Hospitality Management 28. No. 1, pp. 61-81. DOI: https://doi.org./10.20867/thm.28.1.3

Main Projects:

2023-2025 Approved R&D project: “Tourism: Empowering Sustainability”, within the scope of the new Regulation on Research Incentives of the European University, with funding of 5,000 EUR and an execution period of 18 months. Project approved

2023, Application for the scientific project: Food Literacy ‘BeFoodDesign’. This proposal consisted of designing food literacy programs for society, as a cultural change in eating behaviors. Under the INTERREG EU MED program. CREA-CULT-2023-COOP. Project not approved, but will be (re)submitted by the team in the coming months.

Organization of the UNESCO Winter School 2024 under the theme: Digital media for tourism in Creative Cities: Experiences from the Center of Portugal, whose cities covered are Coimbra, Leiria, Caldas da Rainha, Óbidos and Lisbon. This edition of the Winter School aims to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Creative Cities program, created in 2004 by UNESCO. This school is a cultural and educational project in cooperation with UNESCO Chair (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; USI (Università della Svizzera Italiana Lugano (Switzerland); University of Coimbra and European University. https://www.unescochair.usi.ch/winter-school-2024-portugal

2023, Co-editor in collaboration with Cláudia Ribeiro Almeida (University of Algarve), Carlos Ferreira (University of Coimbra) and Cláudia Seabra (University of Coimbra), in a special issue: Tourism, Territories and Sustainable Practices and Policies, published by the Journal of Tourism, Sustainability and Well-being (JTSW)

Member of the Executive Committee that organized the international Congress: Diversity and Sustainability – Opportunities & Threats (DSOTT´2023) at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra, Portugal, on May 31, June 1-2, http://bit. ly/3CaXekQ?r=qr