Sustainable Tourism

Offered By: Wageningen University via edX

Course Description

Overview

Did you know the tourism industry is one of the largest industries worldwide? It faces many challenges, especially in taking on responsibilities to become more sustainable.

The societal importance of tourism has grown significantly in recent decades. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, tourism represents over 9% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and accounts for nearly 8% of global employment. But tourism is more than just a powerful economic force. It is also closely linked to major global changes in culture, politics, technology and the environment. It affects the quality of life and well-being of individuals and regions and plays an important role in community, regional and urban development. Bringing sustainable tourism into practice benefits the whole community.

Join this program and learn about the developments in tourism and the interrelationships between tourism, the economy, society and the environment. You will learn about the different types of sustainable tourism practices, like ecotourism.

The effects of Corona virus on the tourism industry

There is no doubt that the tourism industry is being affected by the Covid-19 corona virus outbreak. How will we recover, and will we fully recover? How does corona effects the tourists and their behaviour? And how can we pick up after this? How do we take it from here? Since it’s so relevant, we will address these questions in our Tourism MOOCs and make room for this on our discussion platform and case studies.

Verified Track

This program offers significant additional value for learners in the verified track. You will work with real life cases. These are cases developed in collaboration with practitioners working on inspiring developments in tourism today. By engaging in a case, you will implement diverse approaches, share insights amongst team-members and teachers, develop an international network and, most importantly, rethink a tourism development of your interest. Subscribe to this program now and help make tourism greener!

Syllabus

Courses under this program:
Course 1: Sustainable Tourism: Society & Environmental Aspects

Wageningen University and Research invites you to this integral introduction of the exciting and complex phenomenon that is tourism. Ranked top 10 best online courses by Class Central, join us to gain an understanding of the scope next to the social and environmental implications of tourism. Take on the challenge of a more critical reflection of this industry, steeped in comfort and enjoyment, and help drive its sustainability!

Course 2: Sustainable Tourism: Rethinking the future

Considering the negative impacts on climate change, the host communities and their natural resources, the growth-driven tourism industry needs to improve its footprint. Join Wageningen University and Research for this online course, nominated for the annual edX® award 2019. Engage in interdisciplinary debates to explore and co-create future responsible travel and tourism initiatives in your (professional) context. Subscribe now.

Courses

192 reviews
6 weeks, 5-7 hours a week, 5-7 hours a week
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Tourism’s profound impact on the world
Tourism continues to experiencing incredible growth. Of all the industries of major importance worldwide, Travel and Tourism directly contribute $1.4 trillion to the global economy and provides one out of ten jobs and that number is growing.

But tourism is more than just a powerful economic force. Tourist activities come with a host of social and environmental issues at tourism destinations. And return, tourism business itself is highly sensitive to global transformations such as changing consumer behaviour, economic developments, natural disaster, epidemics, or acts of terrorism. Tourism is in fact a complex phenomenon.

Introduction to tourism; an all-round perspective
Instead of taking on tourism education’s customary approach – that of growth driven, applied and hospitality management – join us to explore the tourism industry and build your own reflections. You'll be exposed to a variety of insights throughout the course. These include tourism's historical background and a variety of social science approaches will be looked at, with a special focus on the human geography of tourism. You will be exposed to the negative impacts on natural resources, the cultural heritage of host communities and climate change related issues, such as carbon emissions. Which role can sustainable tourism development play to address both the tourism associated economic benefits as well as the collateral costs for key stakeholders?

Based on weekly reflection exercises, you'll be challenged to form your own argument for a tourism development of your choice. You'll also help others by providing and receiving meaningful feedback on their critical reflections of tourism phenomena.

The effects of Corona virus on the tourism industry
There is no doubt that tourism has been greatly affected by the Covid 19 virus outbreak. With the upcoming attempt to rebound post-Corona, all players in the industry face a choice: will it be business as usual or do we re-invent toward more sustainable practices? But also, how has Corona effected tourists and their behaviour? We will discuss these and other highly relevant questions throughout our tourism courses.

For whom
Whether you are a business owner, work in tourism or an fervent traveller, join us for this MOOC for an science based understanding of what tourism does to our living environment, our behaviour and our cultural inheritance. Help drive sustainability in tourism. Subscribe now!

Professional Certificate Programme

This online course, ranked among the 10 best online courses in the world by Class Central, is part of the Professional Certificate Programme Tourism in Transition: Exploring a Sustainable Future, along with the MOOC Sustainable Tourism: Rethinking the Future, which was nominated for the annual edX® award in 2019 and the MOOC Tourism and Climate Change.
67 reviews
9 weeks, 6-8 hours a week, 6-8 hours a week
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Sustainable tourism development put into practice
In this course you will be teamed up and challenged to apply your argumentation skills to implement insights from various tourism disciplines and different social science perspectives to current tourism developments. For example:

Sociology: how is tourism organised (laws/regulations)?
Psychology: what effects how tourists experience tourism (COVID 19?!)
Geography: what does tourism development mean for a particular location?

Learn of and work on promising and new tourism developments, such as Van Life and voluntourism and other inspiring changes observed in the tourism industry. Recognize and co-create future narratives as a tool to compose new business cases and/or project proposals in your professional context. Implement these perspectives to a tourism practice of your choice, and share your insights through regular feedback with experts and other participants in this course.

Debates on sustainable tourism development
Sustainable alternatives can only become real if we allow for an open space for continuous discussion and representation of new ideas. That's why this MOOC offers a platform for ongoing discussions of tourism developments, where you are encouraged to engage in meaningful debates on these innovative developments as they appear, during the course as well as after completion.

The effects of Corona virus on the tourism industry
There is no doubt that tourism has been greatly affected by the Corona pandemic. With the upcoming attempt to rebound post-Corona, the industry faces a choice: back to business-as-usual or re-invention toward more sustainable practices, such as ecotourism? But also, how has Corona effected tourists? We will discuss all related questions throughout our tourism courses.

For whom
Whether you work in tourism, are a tourism related business owner or a fervent traveller, join us for this MOOC as we apply science to a broad array types of tourism. Then come up with your very own to help drive sustainability in tourism. Subscribe now!

Professional Certificate Programme

This online course is part of the Professional Certificate Programme Tourism in Transition: Exploring a Sustainable Future, along with the MOOCs: Sustainable Tourism: Society & Environmental Aspects and Tourism and Climate Change.

Taught by

Jonas Skutka, Joost van Heiningen and Arjaan Pellis