(Re)futuring Tourism Businesses: A Framework for a Sustainable Tourism Online Course

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Nádia Carreira
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/5260
• topic: Sustainable Tourism; Education for Sustainability; COVID-19; Tourism Businesses; Sustainability Marketing; Responsible Leadership; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

For the last two decades, the Travel & Tourism industry has gradually become one of the critical engines of the world’s economic and social development, while also a considerable contributor to unsustainable patterns and its consequent damaging effects. The COVID-19 pandemic that stormed the planet at the beginning of this year has created an inflexion point on the industry’s soaring growth trajectories, severely affecting and compromising both its current and future strength and vitality. Concurrently, it has presented time for reflection. The rhetoric for the need to transform the industry has underpinned the numerous pleas and expressed commitment from industry experts, to move beyond ‘business as usual’ and ‘build back better’, towards a shift to a more sustainable and equitable tourism. As a by-product of the internship at Turismo Centro de Portugal, this report consists of a framework proposal for a holistic, seven-week sustainable tourism free online course, to be provided by Turismo Centro de Portugal to its business stakeholders. The underlying idea relies on the assumption that businesses have an essential role to play in transforming the industry and thus, that education for sustainability is an imperative for encouraging them to become catalysing agents, in creating a novel and improved version of tourism and tackling its inherent challenges. Furthermore, as a Regional Tourism Organisation and due to the visibility and the interconnectedness with its stakeholders, Turismo Centro de Portugal is favourably positioned to promote and foster shared sustainable vision for the destination, namely through education. The framework hence serves the seminal purpose of urging Turismo Centro de Portugal to actively engage its business stakeholders to embark on a shared sustainable tourism quest. Given the complex nature of the tourism industry and the proposed objectives of the course, the literary review undertaken serves to substantiate its relevance, content and design structure. Grounded on a theoretical approach based on scientific and empirical research, statistical data and education industry benchmark research and analysis, it reaches the proposed result, both through deductive reasoning - from reading and critical analysis - and existing courses frameworks, framed under the economics, management, tourism, sustainability & sustainable development, innovation, marketing and leadership thematic. The framework is, however, not free from bias since it also relies on personal empirical and practical knowledge. This invariably means that the input from scholars and practitioners is essential.