Peter Richards

Peter Richards

Peter Richards works at the cross­roads of respons­ible tour­ism and com­munity devel­op­ment in the Great­er Mekong Sub­re­gion. He is cur­rently Pro­ject Man­ager of the EU-fun­ded SWITCH-Asia TOURLINK pro­ject, which aims to green the Thai tour­ism sup­ply chain via a busi­ness part­ner­ship-build­ing approach involving EU buy­ers, Thai tour oper­at­ors, and suppliers.

From 2015 to June 2021, Peter worked with the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Centre’s Myan­mar Inclus­ive Tour­ism pro­ject in Kayah State, East­ern Myan­mar, and Dawei Dis­trict, Tan­intharyi region, South­ern Myanmar.

In 2015, Peter earned a MSc with Dis­tinc­tion in Respons­ible Tour­ism Man­age­ment, and won the UK Asso­ci­ation for Tour­ism in High­er Education’s Prize for Best Post Gradu­ate Stu­dent of Tour­ism. He reg­u­larly lec­tures on tour­ism and com­munity devel­op­ment, and facil­it­ates study tours and field research for stu­dents and professionals.

Peter also works with his wife Prem­ruethai Tosermkit and vet­er­an com­munity work­er Pot­jana Suansri to oper­ate the award-win­ning The Fam­ily Tree, which sup­ports more than 40 Thai com­munity groups, loc­al artists, and social and envir­on­ment­al ini­ti­at­ives. The Fam­ily Tree is respond­ing to the COVID crisis by pro­du­cing Triphala Plus, an Ayurved­ic herb­al drink that “helps to boost the immune system”.