Sustainable Tourism and Evaluation

Course Description:

This course is designed for students who are interested in understanding the concepts of sustainability in the area of tourism marketing and management. This course is also relevant for students with an interest or position in data analysis/evaluation responsibilities in the tourism industry. The course will focus on introducing and applying a set of indicators to monitor the sustainability of a tourism entity or at the destination level. We will conclude the course by sharing best practices in communicating results of evaluation projects to support Destination Management & Marketing Organizations (DMMOs) and their partners in strategic planning, marketing and management decisions.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the components of the destination development, and explain the Tourism Area Life Cycle model

• Recognize how tourism assists in the development of a community’s livability and economy

• Understand the process of evaluation for tourism destination management

• Understand the concepts and indicators of sustainable (tourism) destination management to monitor sustainability of a product, entity, or destination

• Identify main areas of tourism planning and decision making that could benefit from sustainability evaluations

• Identify and evaluate methods for measuring tourism impacts on destinations and find the most suitable method (based on time and budget limitations) to collect data

• Communicate the evaluation results and recommendations to a diverse audience of tourism stakeholders and decision makers

Reflection:

This course introduced the concept of sustainable tourism, which is the concept of tourism making a positive impact on the environment, society, and economy of the host community. Sustainable tourism aims to provide a positive experience for local people; tourism companies; and tourists themselves. This course detailed methods to analyze and measure the positive impact of tourism in a host communities.