Professional Certificate in Responsible Tourism

PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATE IN RESPONSIBLE TOURISM

Why Responsible Tourism?

What is Responsible Tourism about? This short course introduces the concept of Responsible Tourism and explores how it can be used to make tourism better; better for communities and their local economy and better for business. We explore how it creates business advantage and what it means for communities and destination management. We discuss the advantages to domestic and inbound businesses and to communities in destinations, the places where they live and share with tourists who are at leisure. Responsible Tourism is about making better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit, in that order.

The course consists of videos of lectures, interviews, and conversations, written course material, and links to further reading and resources. It has been designed to offer a solid introduction to Responsible Tourism and encourage you to explore in greater depth, now or in the future, those areas of particular interest or utility to you and the people you work with.

This course has been constructed by Professor Emeritus Dr Harold Goodwin, who pioneered Masters courses in Responsible Tourism Management at Greenwich, Leeds Becket and Manchester Metropolitan Universities. Harold’s background is in adult and continuing education, and in his second career in universities, where he taught at the postgraduate level. This continuing education course deals with the issues at the postgraduate level but does not require a university degree to succeed in it.

This course on Responsible Tourism comprises five units, each expected to take two weeks to complete, over a period of ten weeks. A fixed schedule of seminars are designed to support the completion of the course. However, you can take the course at any time and at any pace without timing your studies to the online seminars.

How much time you spend each week on the course will be determined by how much interest each unit sparks and, therefore, how much supplementary material you pursue. The core material in each of the five units is expected to take around two hours.

UNIT 1

What is Responsible Tourism

We explore what it is and how it differs from sustainable tourism. Responsible Tourism is a broad church, it is the action that matters, not the word. Why is this change of focus significant?

UNIT 2

Where has Responsible Tourism come from?

If we know where we have come from, it helps us to understand where we are and to chart a course for a better future, why is Responsible Tourism gaining traction? What does responsibility mean in practice?

UNIT 3

The Business cases for Responsible Tourism

The business case for Responsible Tourism is not singular, it is plural. We look at why adopting Responsible Tourism practices makes business sense. How does it benefit business? What is the commercial benefit?

UNIT 4

Responsible Tourism in Destinations

We take out holidays in their homes. How can the principles of Responsible Tourism be applied in destinations? How do we engage local authorities and communities and enable them to use tourism for their sustainable development rather than be used by it?

UNIT 5

From Theory to Practice

The ideas are the easy part – how can the ideas be applied to ‘make tourism better’? How do you want to make a difference? How do you want to make tourism better?

Professional Certification

The concluding unit is designed to enable you to think through how you can apply the ideas you have learnt during this short course. How can you make a difference and make tourism better? Before issuing a Professional Certificate, we ask that you submit a short report two weeks after the end of the course that records your key learnings and how you plan to apply your learning. We have developed a proforma report format to enable you to do. You may or may not wish to share this with your employer or the group(s) you work with. For an additional fee, we can arrange for further feedback on your report through an individual tutorial and/or ongoing mentoring.