Samantha Murdy

Samantha Murdy is a Senior Lecturer at the Peter Faber Business School within the Faculty of Law and Business. Her research focuses on tourism management, hospitality industry dynamics, and consumer behavior, with a particular emphasis on innovative technologies like VR and robotics in service environments. She explores topics such as long-distance trail branding, price fairness in sharing economies, and the psychological impacts of cryptocurrency on consumer behavior. Her work also addresses sustainability challenges in tourism, including stakeholder collaboration for trail conservation and post-pandemic volunteer tourism recovery.

Key research themes include ancestral tourism motivations, the role of digital technology in travel decision-making, and ethical considerations in human-robot interactions within hospitality. Her recent studies highlight trends in generative AI adoption barriers among tourists and the mediating effects of price transparency in accommodation markets. Co-authored works often investigate liminality theory in volunteer tourism and the intersection of diaspora identity with cultural heritage experiences.

Murdy has contributed over 60 scholarly outputs since 2010, with recent collaborations focusing on cryptocurrency as an emotional recovery tool, VR-enhanced conservation donations, and the paradoxes of halal tourism in non-Muslim destinations. Her research often bridges theoretical frameworks (e.g., actor-network theory) with practical applications in tourism policy and destination management.