Allan studied Economics and Geography at University College Swansea, 1969-72, before completing his PhD at the LSE. After completing his doctoral thesis, he worked as a Research Fellow at the LSE on a project on′Change in Urban Britain′,  and in 1976-8 was Lecturer in Geography at the University of Durham. In 1978 he moved to the Geography Department at the University of Exeter, where he was successively Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and then, from 1995, Professor of Human Geography and European Studies. He was Co-Director of the Centre for European Studies 1987-95. He also jointly established, with Gareth Shaw, an MSc in Tourism, Development and Policy at Exeter in 2000. He was appointed to the Chair in European Integration and Globalization at London Metropolitan in 2006, in the Institute for the Study of European Transformations, and the Working Lives Research Institute. He joined the Tourism Group in the Faculty of Management at Surrey in January 2011.