Do You Want To Get The Right Advantage For Sustainable Tourism?

World Youth Skills Day (July 15) has just passed us, #alpaviram brings to you some relevant courses on sustainable and responsible tourism for working professionals. With the roll out of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, responsible and sustainable tourism is fast picking up as the next big thing in the travel and tourism sector; and the courses listed below will enable you to be prepared for the upcoming shift in this space.

Here are some courses that can be done online:

Sustainable Tourism Online Learning Programs: A set of nine courses are being offered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Global Sustainable Tourism Alliance (GSTA) to train students, practitioners, donor agency representatives, and others working in related fields to understand and develop tourism and its role in international development. The courses are free, but require you to registration to be able to participate in the ciurse related online discussions, and to check for your understanding at the end of each course. The courses are: Global Tourism Achieving Sustainable Goals; Sustainable Tourism Project Development; Tourism Destination Management; Tourism Investment and Finance; Sustainable Tourism Enterprise Development; Tourism Workforce Development; Tourism Conservation Strategies and Models; Scientific, Academic, Volunteer and Educational Travel; and Powering Tourism. The course details are available here.

Post Graduate Diploma in Tourism and Environmental Law: Launched by the Centre for Environmental Law (CEL), WWF-India along with the National Law University, Delhi (NLU, Delhi), the course has been is designed to provide an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the existing issues of tourism and ecotourism, with special focus on socio-cultural, legal and policy issues. The programme includes perspectives on new developments and insights into the relationship between tourism and environment dealt with at both global and regional level. It is a one year programme divided and is offered via distance-learning and online-learning modes, and comprises of five compulsory courses – four theory courses and one project work. Applications are accepted in April, and the programme starts in May. The total cost of the course in INR 15,000. Details here.

Certificate in Sustainable Tourism Management: Offered jointly by The International Eco-Tourism Society (TIES) and the George Washington University. It is a self-managed, distance learning, online process consisting of 6 courses and is equivalent to 12 classroom hours of study which can generally be completed in a month. Each course costs $450 (approximately INR 31,500). For more information, click here.

The author is Ritesh Datta, Co-Founder of Alpaviram. He can be reached at ekalpaviram@gmail.com.