Educational Resources

The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) co-developed this online course, supported by Expedia Group, to help build the capacity of tourism and hospitality businesses towards plastic waste reduction and community empowerment. The course guides readers through the steps for minimising the sourcing and consumption of single-use plastics as well as the importance of businesses to sign the UNESCO Sustainable Travel Pledge. 

Length: 64 pages 

Readers will learn about the current carbon reporting and reduction targets required as part of reaching the UK’s net-zero targets, as well as information on climate-related risks and how to manage them. Moreover, the guidebook supports in measuring carbon for an organisation by creating a carbon inventory for direct and indirect carbon emissions. Ultimately, it provides ways to approach a net-zero commitment.

Duration: 1 hour

This decarbonisation blueprint sheds light on the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi), the benefits of setting sciense-based targets, selecting the right SBT approach, and the different steps towards decarbonising as a tour operator.

Duration: 1 hour

Climate change, described by UNEP FI as the greatest market failure in history, threatens global well-being and stability. The private sector plays a key role in mitigation. These guidelines help tourism businesses—especially accommodation providers and event organizers—identify funding sources and develop finance proposals for low-emission, climate-resilient operations.

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes

Tourism Cares Online Training offers courses designed to help tourism professionals embed sustainability and community impact into their work. The platform focuses on practical tools and insights that strengthen responsible practices, build industry resilience, and create positive change through travel.

The Travel Foundation Training provides practical, sustainability-focused learning for tourism businesses and destinations. Its courses help professionals integrate responsible practices into daily operations, strengthening environmental stewardship, community benefit, and long-term business resilience.

This manual has been designed for all categories of establishment owners as well as assessors to use as a quick reference guide.

Length: 29 pages

Accessible travel is essential for inclusivity and offers a valuable business opportunity. According to WHO, most people will experience disability at some point. Key areas include developing inclusive systems, offering accessible services, providing detailed information, marketing effectively, training staff, and involving people with disabilities in decision-making.

Length: 8 pages

The Tourism for SDGs Platform (T4SDGs), developed by UNWTO with support from Switzerland’s SECO, is a global online co-creation space for the tourism sector to support the UN’s 2030 Agenda.  Through its key functions - Learn, Share, Act - it enables stakeholders to access best practices, share initiatives and drive measurable action towards building a smarter, inclusive, sustainable tourism industry.

A concise and insightful session by Planet Abled to gain valuable insights on fostering better inclusion and learn actionable steps towards enhancing accessibility in tourism.

Duration: 45 minutes

Ukarimu (Swahili for hospitality) is an open-source curriculum designed to equip young people in Africa’s tourism and hospitality sector with the skills they need to succeed. Using active learning methods, it emphasises both practical expertise and essential soft skills. Developed in Africa for Africa.

UNWTO Tourism Online Academy is a global e-learning platform offering high-quality courses for tourism professionals and students. Developed with leading universities and institutions, it provides accessible training on management, innovation, and sustainable tourism to support career growth and industry development worldwide.

Given the importance of this issue and the dedication of many World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) Member organisations to end human trafficking, WTTC formed a Human Trafficking Taskforce which was launched at the Global Summit in Seville, Spain4 To help eradicate human trafficking, the Taskforce developed an action framework which focuses on raising awareness, education and training, advocacy, and support.

Length: 19 pages

The Alliance’s online training platform empowers hospitality professionals with practical modules on sustainability topics such as climate action, water stewardship, and modern slavery. Each course includes real-world examples, tools, and certifications to help hotels and tourism businesses embed responsible practices and build resilient operations.

This informative online session showcased the newly released E-Learning “Human Rights in Tourism” - a freely accessible and self-paced online learning tool developed to support tourism suppliers in understanding and applying human rights due diligence along the value chain.

Duration: 45 minutes

This self-paced course helps tourism managers integrate local communities through inclusive business models, addressing challenges and solutions for community involvement, with a badge awarded upon completion. 

Duration: 1 hour

This webinar will shed light on how tourism stakeholders can influence travellers to choose more sustainable products with relatively simple means. It will help understand communication's relevance to achieving customer understanding and goodwill for one's business principles and highlight how customers can be sensitised in the destination.

Duration: 1 hour

This self-paced course teaches tourism managers to involve local communities, identify stakeholders, integrate community linkages into daily operations, and understand the mutual benefits for locals and businesses.

Duration: 1 hour

This webinar will help clarify what needs to be done to make business travel socially responsible. The focus will be on two crucial basic questions:

1. How do I book?
2. How do I train?

This introductory webinar is explicitly targeted at people who are responsible for planning and booking business trips.

Duration: 1 hour

This self-paced course for tour guides covers cultural heritage interpretation, including tangible and intangible heritage like sites, buildings, arts, and crafts, emphasising their importance and principles for effective guiding.

Duration: 1 hour

This introductory webinar will help clarify what every tourism business can do to make travel socially responsible. It is explicitly targeted at small and medium-sized tour operators and tourism businesses and is intended for you to:

• understand your stake – be aware of human rights issues your value chain;
• see the benefit – be clear about the business case to respect human rights; and
• get started – know tools, resources and practical recommendations to implement suitable measures in your strategy and operations.

Duration: 1 hour

This course explores gender equality and women’s empowerment in tourism, their impacts, and strategies for intervention. A certificate is awarded upon completion. 

Duration: 1 hour

This basic webinar will show overlaps and links between human rights, the SDGs, and the UNGPs: Learn how the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights provide a way for businesses to contribute to the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Find out how human rights are included in the SDGs and what that means for your business. Identify the first steps to keep an overview and develop a strategy for integrating human rights, SDGs and the Guiding Principles in your business operations.

Duration: 1 hour

This online course introduces sustainable community engagement for accommodation providers, covering key concepts, benefits, and best practices. Includes videos, resources, and quizzes, with a certificate upon completion—perfect for enhancing sustainability in hospitality.

Duration: 1 hour

This webinar is explicitly targeted at people who are entrusted with internal (employees) or external (supplier, customers) communication within a tourism business or tourism-related organisation and is intended to:

• Bringing it to life – learn how your commitment can be communicated.
• Avoiding pitfalls – know how to talk about human rights without being deterrent.
• Building back better – understand the benefit of a human rights narrative to be more resilient.

Duration: 1 hour

This course explores how intangible cultural heritage supports sustainable development, resilience, and community well-being, addressing challenges like health, gender, and conflict, emphasising the importance of keeping living heritage alive.

Duration: 6 weeks, with 2-4 hours per week

The Gender Mainstreaming Guidelines for the Public Sector in Tourism have been developed to support the tourism public sector to integrate gender equality considerations and women’s economic empowerment into tourism planning and implementation. In practice, gender mainstreaming involves the systematic integration of gender perspectives – and the experiences of diverse women – in all policies, programmes and thematic issues in the tourism sector. The guidelines contain tools to support national, regional, local and other tourism institutions to apply an approach to tourism planning, programming and implementation that integrates gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.

Length: 24 pages

This course helps tourism professionals create authentic, community-led experiences that benefit locals and visitors. It provides practical tools and examples to integrate equity, sustainability, and lasting connections. By doing so, it fosters responsible tourism that supports and enriches local cultures and communities.

Duration: 1 hour

The "Gender Inclusive Strategy for Tourism Businesses" contains tools to support private sector tourism enterprises of all types and sizes achieve effective and consistent strategies and programmes for gender equality across their operations. As demonstrated by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, gains in gender equality and women’s economic empowerment can be easily lost if they are not embedded in private sector operations. These guidelines aim to support the private sector in implementing the Action Plan developed in the Global Report on Women in Tourism - Second Edition. In order to apply gender mainstreaming in practice, they provide details on four key steps for companies of all sizes and types. 

Length: 20 pages

This course helps professionals create authentic, sustainable travel experiences that benefit locals and visitors by building tools for community-led tourism, fostering stronger community partnerships, and delivering immersive, equitable experiences that last.

Duration: 2 hours

The evidence is clear: gender equality is critical to business performance and sustainable economic growth globally. The Women’s Empowerment Principles Gender Gap Analysis Tool (WEPs Tool) is a joint project of the UN Global Compact, UN Women, the Multilateral Investment Fund of the IDB, and IDB Invest. It serves as a business-driven tool designed to help companies from around the world assess gender equality performance across the workplace, marketplace, and community. This guidance document is to help companies understand the steps to prepare and complete their self-assessment. It is recommended that large companies begin these steps 1-2 weeks in advance to allow sufficient time to form a team and gather relevant data.

Length: 24 pages

This course examines heritage and tourism development from social sciences and management perspectives, integrating global and local views. It reviews key concepts like authenticity, commodification, and sustainable development, and evaluates topical issues such as marketing strategies and cultural interpretation.

Duration: 1 hour 11 minutes

These 9 modules supports digital marketing trainers to help tour operators improve their online presence.

Self-paced

This guide helps businesses in the tourism value chain achieve mutual benefits by aligning development impacts with core goals. It maps opportunities, challenges, solutions, and partners who can provide support, based on research, case studies, and expert feedback.

Length: 80 pages

These 10 modules will help any trainer to implement a relevant and practical training to inexperienced tour guides.

Self-paced

The guidelines are intended to provide a framework for good business practices. It is important to note that the guidelines are not standards but meant to inform good, responsible and culturally sensitive business behavior. They are meant to be scaled, adapted to fit local conditions and adjusted over time.

Length: 24 pages

These 10 modules will help any trainer to give others an introduction in adventure tourism.

Self-paced

With the growing trend of tourism activities featuring visits to local projects, more children are involved in tourism and can be put at risk of exploitation. As part of their human rights due diligence, tourism businesses need to develop child-sensitive products, implement policies and adopt approaches that recognise children's vulnerability, seek to mitigate risks and ensure their safety. This webinar is targeted at tourism businesses and other stakeholders offering project visits where tourists come into contact with children during their travels.

Duration: 1 hour

Tourism drives 8% of global emissions, and climate change is already impacting destinations and experiences. This webinar shares practical steps and real business examples to help accommodation providers take climate action, delivered through UNEP’s Transforming Tourism Value Chains project with global partners.

Duration: 1 hour

The toolkit is designed to help anyone who makes decisions on how to talk to guests about the topic of food waste. This includes: Food and Beverage Program Directors, Restaurant General Managers, Chefs and Food Service Personnel, Guest Services Managers, Guest Communications Directors. If you’re in one of these roles, you’ve probably already thought about how to reduce food waste, both in front and back of house. And you may have concerns about how to talk to guests about the issue without alienating them or sounding preachy. That’s exactly what this toolkit is designed to help you do.

Length: 41 pages

This session introduces accommodation providers on SIDS to the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism and guides them in creating their first Climate Action Plan. It outlines how they can align with global goals to halve emissions by 2030, reach net zero by 2050, and report progress annually.

Duration: 7 minutes

This session introduces accommodation providers on SIDS to the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism and guides them in creating their first Climate Action Plan. It outlines how they can align with global goals to halve emissions by 2030, reach net zero by 2050, and report progress annually.

Duration: 8 minutes

This session introduces accommodation providers on SIDS to the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism and guides them in creating their first Climate Action Plan. It outlines how they can align with global goals to halve emissions by 2030, reach net zero by 2050, and report progress annually.

Duration: 1 hour

This self-paced course covers animal welfare in tourism, exploring the impacts of tourism activities on animal welfare and providing guidelines for responsible interactions with animals in human care and in the wild, including a set of Do's and Don'ts for different scenarios.

Duration: 1 hour

This self-paced course teaches how sustainable tourism can help protect sea turtle populations by introducing turtle-friendly practices for beachfront businesses. It also explores the significance of sea turtles in marine ecosystems and the challenges they face.

Duration: 1 hour

The guide offers a framework or model for sustainabile tourism implementation at a national level.  In recognition that there is no "one size fits all" approach, this incorporates the flexibility to enable it to be applied to a wide range of destinations and regulatory settings.

Lenght: 53 pages

This webinar offers practical guidance on using evidence-based nudging to influence staff and guest behaviors, reducing emissions, improving customer experience, and benefiting hotel sustainability and profitability.

Duration: 1 hour

This workshop highlights consumers' role in sustainability, exploring trends in climate awareness and ethical purchasing. Participants will learn about influencing sustainable choices, improving resource efficiency, and effective communication of sustainability messages to customers.

Duration: 7 minutes

This workshop highlights consumers' role in sustainability, exploring trends in climate awareness and ethical purchasing. Participants will learn about influencing sustainable choices, improving resource efficiency, and effective communication of sustainability messages to customers.

Duration: 10 minutes

This workshop highlights consumers' role in sustainability, exploring trends in climate awareness and ethical purchasing. Participants will learn about influencing sustainable choices, improving resource efficiency, and effective communication of sustainability messages to customers.

Duration: 14 minutes

The Responsible Tourism Handbook provides a comprehensive guide for tourism operators to minimize their impact on the environment and benefit local communities. It offers practical advice on sustainable practices, community engagement, and conservation, promoting responsible tourism in the Magaliesberg region of South Africa.

Lenght: 52 pages

This self-paced course helps senior tourism managers understand energy management in hotels, linking consumption to carbon emissions. It covers assessing energy use, engaging stakeholders, and implementing efficiency measures for sustainable operations.

Duration: 1 hour

In a warming world, tourism businesses must balance people, planet, and profit. This course shows entrepreneurs how to manage impacts, innovate sustainably, and lead climate-positive change without breaking the bank.

Duration: 1 hour

This self-paced course will help you understand what Green & Clean Tourism means. You will find out which negative effects tourism can have on the environment and the host communities and which measures you can implement to enable green and clean practices in your tourism business.

Duration: 1 hour

This course covers AI-driven digital nudging for responsible tourism, including behavioral economics, chatbot creation, ethical practices, and future trends in AI and behavioral design. Participants learn to design effective, ethical digital nudges using chatbots. 

Duration: 8 hours over 4 weeks

This course covers sustainable destination management principles, stakeholder engagement, innovative marketing, and resilience strategies to ensure long-term, responsible tourism. Gain the skills to lead and shape the future of sustainable tourism destinations.

Duration: 8 hours over 4 weeks

This course explores accessibility in the travel industry, highlighting the importance of inclusion for travelers with disabilities. You’ll gain insights on enhancing services, communications, and products to support diverse needs and help build a more accessible world.

Duration: 1 hour

This one-hour self-paced course covers the principles of health and safety in tourism and hospitality. You’ll learn about common hazards, key responsibilities, and the occupational, human, and environmental factors that affect workplace wellbeing, as well as the importance of training and supervision.

Duration: 1 hour

This one-hour self-paced course introduces tour guides and aspiring guides to key health and legal requirements. You’ll learn how to assess risks, manage health and safety emergencies, and handle challenges such as health emergencies and crisis while tour guiding.

Duration: 1 hour

This program teaches first-tier suppliers in tourism to address human rights issues through four basic and one advanced module, covering regulations like the German Supply Chain Act and European CSDDD, with real-world examples and certification for both basic and advanced levels.

Duration: 2,5 hours over 4 models

Tour guides are often the first point of contact for travelers’ questions and play a key role in responding to their behavior. This gives them significant responsibility in upholding human rights. This booklet is designed to support tour guides in carrying out that responsibility effectively.

Length: 12 pages

This self-paced course helps tourism managers create decent work conditions. You’ll learn why decent work matters, how to assess and improve your business environment, enhance staff appeal, and strengthen communication.

Duration: 1 hour

This self-paced course explores women’s rights and gender equality in tourism, highlighting stories of women improving their working conditions and contributing to business success. It is designed for tourism professionals and anyone interested in the topic. You will learn to explain the key issues related to women’s rights and gender equality in the sector.

Duration: 1 hour

This one-hour self-paced course explores women’s rights and gender equality in tourism, highlighting real stories of women improving their working conditions and contributing to business success. A badge is awarded upon completion and passing the assessment.

Duration: 1 hour

This course focuses on gender issues and women empowerment. The course features SDG 5 advocates such as Chair of The Elders Mary Robinson, previous President of Ireland and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Executive Director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-ngcuka, Youth Envoy to the UNSG Jayathma Wickramanayake, and many more.

The self-paced online course consists of 5 modules

This training is developed for anyone with an interest in bartending and coffee making in the tourism & hospitality. Facilitators Handbook.

Length: 17 pages

This training module serves as guidance to train young people in sustainability in the tourism & hospitality sector. Facilitators Handbook.

Length: 17 pages

This factsheet provides guidance for hotels on how to address risks when recruiting temporary workers.

Length: 2 pages

The course explores digital transformation in tourism, focusing on customer experience, operational efficiency, and innovation. Through videos, readings, and case studies, participants learn to implement digital strategies and build sustainable tourism ecosystems.

Duration: 7 hours

Culinary Basics for Operations, Catering Management, and New Techniques is a comprehensive course that explores the culinary domain. From foundational techniques to diverse cooking methods and creativity in the kitchen, participants delve into menu development, market analysis, recipe adaptation, and menu engineering for profitability. The course also covers key aspects of catering management, including planning, staffing, financial considerations, and legal matters. Participants emerge from the course with a thorough understanding of the dynamic culinary landscape.

Duration: 8 hours

The Innovation and Technology Management in Tourism and Hospitality course covers different ICT infrastructures and tools, taking a closer look at their roles in shaping the business environment, business models, marketing practices, revenue strategies, and customer service techniques. You will discuss the dynamics generated in the development of ICT and their impact on tourism and hospitality organizations. The course will also cover the themes of digital transformation, business analytics, and digital marketing.

Duration: 12 weeks, with 6-8 hours per week

Fundamentals of Tourism - Industry Management delves into how technology and innovation have transformed tourism management, emphasizing the importance of personalized customer experiences and data utilization. Participants will explore key areas such as strategy, finance, digital marketing, and operations management. Designed for professionals and managers, the program provides practical knowledge to navigate the complexities of modern tourism, ensuring relevance and competitiveness in a dynamic market.

Duration: 10 weeks with 3-4 hours per week

The SA Specialist: Essentials course is an interactive learning experience designed to improve your knowledge of South Africa and equip you with the skills to sell South Africa as a tourist destination; in essence, you become an expert on South African travel, giving you the opportunity to market yourself as such and to improve the level of service you give to clients.

Self-paced

The SA Specialist: Experiences programme is an online learning course designed to expose those who have completed the SA Specialist: Essentials programme to a series of fantastic South African experiences. Knowledge of these experiences will vastly improve your ability to sell the country as a tourist destination and assist you in compiling ever-more attractive travel packages. There are seven categories of experiences to choose from when doing the course.

Self-paced

This self-paced course introduces the basics of entrepreneurship in tourism through the stories of three successful entrepreneurs. You’ll learn key principles, skills, and methods for entrepreneurial thinking, and gain practical insights to help you start your own business.

Duration: 1 hour

This free mini-course is designed for tourism businesses looking to grow but unsure where to start. Drawing on real-world experience across multiple industries, it offers practical strategies tailored for hotels, spas, restaurants, attractions, travel agents, tour guides, and more. The course cuts through conflicting advice to provide proven, actionable insights without any upsell—just tools to help you move your business forward.

Duration: 9 lectures over 2 hours

This course is for beginners entering the travel and tourism sector, focusing on desk jobs in agencies, airlines, and related fields. You’ll learn industry basics, key terminology, and the role of geography in tourism planning. 

Duration: 49 short lessons over 1 hour 30 minutes

This curriculum is a free resource that can be used by qualified, non-commercial organisations to further the reach and help support more disadvantaged young people to build a better future. We invite anyone who is interested in using this curriculum as part of their own youth employment initiatives to get in touch to find out more. This could include hotels, non-profits, training organisations, funders, or governments.

Duration: 100 hours 

This self-paced course teaches tourism managers and enthusiasts to develop child-friendly tourism, understand child rights, identify negative impacts, promote positive practices, and combat child sexual exploitation in tourism. 

Duration: 1 hour

This self-paced course explores tourism's impact on child rights, highlighting children’s vulnerabilities and how growing travel trends increase risks. It offers insights into protecting children and benefits for your tourism business. (1 hour)

The Child Welfare and the Travel Industry: Global Good Practice Guidelines have been developed to provide a common understanding of child welfare issues throughout the travel industry and to provide all travel businesses with guidance to prevent all forms of exploitation and abuse of children that could be related to travellers and the tourism industry.

Duration: 13 pages

This protocol provides tour guides with practical guidelines to prevent, identify, and report suspected cases of sexual exploitation and child labor in tourism. Aimed at all tour guides in the country, it highlights their key role and responsibilities in safeguarding human rights through direct contact with travelers. 

Duration: 6 pages

In this webinar we will look at the different parts in the food system where the hospitality industry can have an influence on from production to consumption. Afterwards, participants will be able to identify actions for the planning, procurement, and management of food within their operations to improve overall impacts.

Duration: 1 hour

This course explores the link between water security and tourism, helping participants understand tourism's impact on water resources. It teaches tools to assess and manage hotel water use, enabling effective conservation and sustainable practices within hotel operations.

Duration: 1 hour 

This course explores tourism’s link to global water security, focusing on water use and costs in hotels. It covers the water management cycle, strategies for savings, and ways to engage staff and guests in conserving water.

Duration: 1 hour

This workshop explores circular, sustainable hotel procurement, highlighting principles, case studies, and international examples to reduce risks, boost customer engagement, and create socio-economic value through eco-friendly practices.

Duration: 10 mins

This workshop explores circular, sustainable hotel procurement, highlighting principles, case studies, and international examples to reduce risks, boost customer engagement, and create socio-economic value through eco-friendly practices.

Duration: 15 mins

This workshop explores circular, sustainable hotel procurement, highlighting principles, case studies, and international examples to reduce risks, boost customer engagement, and create socio-economic value through eco-friendly practices.

Duration: 18 mins

This webinar offers practical tips for hoteliers to reduce plastic use and increase circularity, showcasing successful examples and insights from experts, helping tourism contribute to solving the global plastic pollution crisis.

Duration: 1 hour

This handbook targets the tourism sector, focusing on accommodation and transportation. It guides managers on communicating with children and preventing child exploitation. The handbook offers examples of preventive policies for hotels, taxis, airlines, travel agencies, and other transportation providers to help protect children in the tourism industry. 

Duration: 84 pages

A video that explains why donations often don’t help orphans.  For more information visit the website for ThinkChildSafe

Duration: 1 minute 16 seconds