The Master in International Tourism is deeply involved in the UNESCO Chair in ICT to develop and promote Sustainable Tourism in World Heritage Sites – hosted at USI Lugano – through teaching, research projects, internships, and Master thesis opportunities.

Approved in Spring 2013, and established in September, the UNESCO chair is committed to perform extensive research and teaching on how ICT, especially the internet, can be effectively exploited to develop and promote sustainable tourism at the World Heritage Sites (WHSs), with a special emphasis on the southern hemisphere. Its scope touches and overlaps on the following fields: eTourism, eLearning, and ICT4D (ICT for Development). Furthermore, the chair attempts to facilitate the flow of best practices and state-of-the-art information among WHSs when it comes to online communication and presence.

The Goals of the UNESCO CHAIR are:

  • Support WHSs in online communication through extensive research, training, capacity building, sharing and dissemination of guidelines, best practices, and case studies.
  • Help the WHSs in developing and emerging countries to develop sustainably by training local stakeholders.
  • Ensure a deeper understanding and respect of cultural and natural richness of the sites amongst visitors and prospects at the global level. In particular, educating tourists and prospects to understand the fragility of WHSs, and preparing them when it comes to the behavior at the sites, i.e. how they should contribute to protect and not damage the heritage, as well as educating them on how their behavior and actions should enrich and support the development of local communities.
  • Develop an interdisciplinary network of scholars active in the relevant fields.
  • Set up an annual summer school devoted to the topic; attract young researchers, and players in respective tourism bodies to do research at the Chair.

Philosophy & “ABCDE Framework”

The following video outlines the many ways Information and Communication Technologies can help to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites: