The Erasmus+ funded ENRICHER hubs project has published the teacher’s manual Guidelines for a Green Tourism Business Challenge, designed to support higher education institutions in integrating service design and design thinking methods into sustainable tourism education.
The manual places service design at the heart of learning and innovation. It provides educators with a practical framework for engaging students in solving real tourism business challenges through user-centered research, co-creation, ideation, prototyping, and testing. The approach aims to strengthen students’ capabilities in developing sustainable tourism services while fostering collaboration between higher education institutions and industry partners.
The publication brings together experiences and best practices from Green Tourism Business Challenges carried out in Georgia and Moldova as part of the ENRICHER project. During these challenges, students developed service and tourism concepts for hotels, wineries, tourism organizations, and rural tourism businesses, while companies benefited from fresh perspectives and innovative development ideas.
The experiences demonstrated that service design-based design sprints can significantly enhance students’ problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills, while deepening their understanding of sustainable tourism development in practice. The method effectively connects theory with real-world challenges and provides valuable experiential learning opportunities.
The ENRICHER hubs project aims to modernize tourism education and strengthen green tourism competences, particularly in Georgia and Moldova. The new manual represents a lasting project outcome by offering higher education institutions a practical resource for combining service design, sustainability, and industry collaboration in education.
Read the manual below.