Sustainable Tourism Experience Design

The module Sustainable Tourism Experience Design will provide insight into the elements of the design thinking process and strategies from behavioural economics for designing inclusive, sustainable, and regenerative tourism experiences in particular (i.e., giving back more than we take from a destination's community, environment, and economy).

This module will start with an introduction to the design thinking process and experience design, followed by an overview of concepts such as regenerative tourism, sustainable tourism, responsible tourism, community-based tourism, indigenous tourism, ecotourism, and nature-based tourism.

In a second part, focusing on the intention/attitude-behaviour gap in sustainable tourism, learners deepen their understanding of current challenges and opportunities for regenerative tourism. Drawing on design thinking and strategies from behavioural economics, this module concludes by exploring different ways to bridge the intention/attitude-behaviour gap in designing regenerative tourism in and to destinations.

Throughout this module, learners will develop their ability to think critically and creatively about how we
can design regenerative tourism experiences in an inclusive process by actively turning the acquired
knowledge into action in hands-on and minds-on collaborative exercises in small groups.

By the end of this module, learners will be able to: 

• evaluate current design thinking applications in tourism in general – and in regenerative tourism in particular (i.e., giving back more than we take from a destination's community, natural environment, and economy) – using the acquired knowledge and hands-on experience of the design thinking process and its mindsets

• develop inclusive design processes starting from needs: not only the needs of (different) guests, but paying special attention to the needs of destination community members including local residents and tourism professionals, as well as the natural environment

• design regenerative tourism experiences for everyone involved drawing on strategies from behavioural economics to bridge the intention/attitude-behaviour gap

• Good health and well-being
• Decent work and economic growth
• Indusrty, innovation and infrastracture
• Sustainable cities and communities
• Responsible consumption and production

In presence

The Sustainable Tourism Experience Design module comprises face-to-face sessions with in-class Wooclap quizzes to support the learning process, complemented by case studies and hands-on, minds-on exercises in class to train design thinking skills in the context of regenerative tourism.

The assessment will consist of participation in as well as individual contribution to all in-class activities (10%), collaborative work in small groups during the lectures in class (40%), as well as a final individual final paper (50%). In the latter, learners will be able to reflect on their own learning process throughout the course and incorporate key learnings. Instructions for the individual paper will be provided in class during the first lecture.