TourEdu meets in Turku!

🇫🇮 Thank you, Turku! What a week!

In September, the TourEdu partners from Turku University of Applied Sciences, SEA – Syddansk Erhvervsakademi, Universidade de Coimbra, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences came together in Finland for a few packed days of research, discussion and new ideas for the future of tourism education. 🌍🎓

🔎 So, what have we learned so far?

A major focus was our ongoing work in WP2 – Mapping Job Profiles for Future Tourism Professionals. We discussed our analysis of competence levels and gaps across tourism and hospitality – and how these findings can be translated into a curriculum reform toolkit and interactive workbook for educational institutions.

A small teaser 👀: Despite collecting data from seven different industry segments across Denmark, Finland, Norway and Portugal, we are seeing striking similarities in the competence needs identified across digital, green and social competences.

🤝 From mapping gaps to creating solutions

We also kicked off our WP3 activities. The next step is to work directly with tourism and hospitality stakeholders in our respective countries to co-create, test and evaluate new training approaches.
We also took a deep dive into the do’s and don’ts of micro-credentials, with the aim of translating our work into relevant and flexible courses for tourism professionals.

✨ But TourEdu wasn’t the only thing happening in Turku!

We combined our consortium meeting with the 3 ECTS Blended Intensive Programme “Sustainable and Regenerative Tourism in Archipelago and Rural Regions.” Nineteen international students from Denmark, Norway, Portugal and Austria joined Finnish students to explore regenerative tourism in practice.
A highlight was our excursion to Seili/Själö in the Turku Archipelago, where students gained first-hand insights into local communities and the UNESCO Archipelago Sea Biosphere Reserve. It provided a great setting for discussing a central idea in regenerative tourism: What if tourism aimed not simply to minimise negative impacts, but to actively contribute something positive to the places and communities we visit? 🌱

A huge thank you to Susanna, Telle, Timo, Maija, Annika and the team at Turku University of Applied Sciences for hosting us and organising both the TourEdu meeting and BIP. And thank you to Christian Dragin-Jensen, Susanna Saari, Benjamin Donner, Helene Maristuen and Erika Silventoinen for sharing their knowledge with the students. 🙌

We left Turku with plenty of new input, a long to-do list – and even more enthusiasm for the next stages of TourEdu!