Andrew Holden is Professor of Environment and Tourism, University of Bedfordshire, and also the Director for the Centre for Research into the Environment and Sustainable Tourism Development (CREST). He is a graduate in environmental sciences, his PhD was undertaken within the Department of Geography at the University of Reading, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He has authored 3 text books, including the Environment and Tourism produced by Routledge, the second edition of which has just been published.

He has held research fellow positions in several British universities and previously worked in the private sector, for the Economic Studies Group, as a consultant for development projects. His research and consultancy work has been undertaken in Indonesia, Nepal, Turkey, Russia and Cyprus, alongside the United Kingdom. He is particularly interested in the relationship between natural resource conservation and poverty reduction, and currently has several PhD students working in this area, including two senior officials on secondment from Ministries in Ghana and Kenya.

He acts as a referee for academic journals; for research bids from the Nuffield Foundation and sits on the editorial board of three academic journals. His invited key note talks at international conferences have included the Arctic Research Institute in Finland; the World Wide Fund for Nature in Athens; and the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) in Madrid..