Training Programme | Modules description

Training Programme | Modules Description

1. Introduction to Climate Change & Tourism
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity and has been the subject of important international agreements over the past decades. The activities related to tourism contribute to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions and are in turn affected by climate change through extreme temperature and weather phenomena and rising sea levels. Awareness is slowly generated in the tourism industry from various consortia and movements that aim to lower the carbon footprint and environmental impacts of tourism. As this new drive is becoming more widespread, an increasing number of tourism businesses adopt a more sustainable approach and may serve as examples of good practices.

2. New EU Tourism Strategy & Sustainability Challenges
The urgency of climate change combined with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has launched a huge dialogue between stakeholders in the EU tourism sector. The challenges faced by the industry and the plan for the future of tourism were the focus of the EU Tourism Convention 2020, which organised three distinct workshops regarding (i) Safe and seamless tourism experience; (ii) Greener holidays and, (iii) Tourism powered by data. These categories defined the path of transition towards the tourism of tomorrow and the call for programs and initiatives along these lines.

3. Evaluate your Sustainability Footprint 
The environmental impact of a person, a country or a specific business can be quantified through a series of evaluation tools that look at the life cycle of a product or service and estimate the greenhouse gas emissions (or carbon footprint), as well as other types of pollution caused at each stage. Thus, interested parties can better understand the sources of pollution and work to minimise them by applying the appropriate solutions, either technological or operational. In order to recognise efforts towards minimising the sustainability footprint, certifications exist that reward businesses with increased fame and access to markets. These certifications can be based on different methodologies and look at different aspects of environmental impact. Furthermore, businesses may participate in voluntary market mechanisms in order to counterbalance their carbon footprint.

4. Management & Transformation to a Green Economy 
Green Economy seeks to reconcile the traditional business model with the aspects of environmental sustainability by assigning inherent economic value to natural capital and ecosystem services. The transition to a green economy however requires informed management decisions, and a systematic effort to transform the business model by introducing KPIs relevant to energy and resource consumption, sustainable practices, regulatory compliance etc. and evaluating accordingly. The reduce, reuse, recycle, recover (resource generation) and refuse model will be analysed also.

5. Green Operations in SMEs 
Although an SME by itself likely has a very small environmental footprint, SMEs constitute the vast majority of businesses worldwide and thus their collective footprint is very significant. The only way to minimise it is for all SMEs to try to adopt greener practices. Often SMEs feel they lack the resources and skills to adopt a more sustainable model, but the reality is that much can be done without getting into technically complex territory. Simple actions such as choosing the correct supplier or reducing waste (among others) can make a difference. The market environment is supportive towards green re-engineering and there exist plenty of financial, training and support schemes for SMEs trying to become more sustainable.

6. Standardization
Standards are frameworks of principles and measurable criteria that entities need to conform to in order to achieve a certain recognition or certification. Tourism is a sector rife with national and international standards regarding the quality and availability of different kinds of products and services. Standards regarding sustainable aspects of tourism are increasingly important for destinations and businesses, who are called upon to tackle environmental as well as social and cultural issues. Various examples can be found globally and especially in Europe. An SME looking to standardise its sustainable practices can choose among a selection of certification schemes that are suitable for their business.

7. Sustainable Tourism Skills & Development 
Sustainable practices in tourism SMEs greatly depend on the awareness level and associated skills of the people working in them. Even the best intentions can falter if not backed by active efforts to inform and improve the sustainable skills of everyone involved in the business. Luckily, in the digital age it is very easy to provide and to attend high quality training regardless of where you are and sustainability courses are increasingly part of tourism degrees, since they usually involve acquiring skills that increase the competitiveness of the personnel. 

8. Resilience in Tourism 
The tourism industry is characterized by global value chains and its reliance on natural resources, thus it is prone to a number of threats such as climate change, natural disasters, economic recession, political instabilities, internal turmoil and terrorism. Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed tourism's vulnerability to shocks and highlighted the need to improve the way destinations and businesses deal with crisis phenomena. This links tourism to resilience. Consequently, resilience applied to tourism is a way to deal with social, ecological or economic disturbances and to foster sustainable development of tourist destinations.

9. Tourism and COVID-19 / The next day
The unprecedented global crisis precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the tourism sector to a standstill and to a radical re-evaluation of its core model. A statistical analysis of the impact of COVID on global tourism paints a harrowing picture and it is clear that new strategies and solutions must be put forward if the sector is to rebuild itself. One thing seems to be clear: Tourism needs to become more sustainable and resilient. As tourism is now very high in the global agenda, it is an opportunity for governments to work together to come through this crisis and support a new model for tourism.

10. Group Assignment on Sustainable Tourism
In the final day, groups of participants will be called to create a company simulation on a green model operation. During the day, there will be a presentation from each group representative in order to give a summary of the activities of a virtual tourism company that will be embracing sustainable practices.
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