Sustainable Tourism Online Learning Program

Rapid and continuous growth over the past twenty years has made tourism one of the world's most significant sources of employment and of GDP, and it is now widely recognized to be one of the world's largest industries. Tourism development, done right, can have enormous cross-sectoral potential to achieve multiple co-objectives of economic growth and poverty reduction, biodiversity conservation, and natural resources management, and it is a powerful tool for addressing other important cross-cutting agendas such as gender equity, global health, education, and local governance. Sustainable tourism has the potential to not only mitigate the potentially harmful impacts of visitation to a natural area, but it can also act as a powerful tool to support conservation of the ecosystems upon which it depends.

Tourism particularly benefits the economies of developing countries, where most of the sector's new tourism jobs and businesses are being created. This rapid growth has encouraged many developing nations to view tourism as key to promoting economic growth. To this end, tourism has tremendous potential to help achieve USAID's strategic objectives of economic growth and poverty reduction, biodiversity conservation, and natural resources management, and it is a powerful tool for addressing other important cross-cutting agendas such as gender equity, global health, education, and local governance. In recent years, Mission and Field Office requests have increased for technical assistance with design and development of projects that will be successful and sustainable long past their USAID-funded project life.

A set of nine courses have been developed by the USAID Global Sustainable Tourism Alliance (GSTA) Program to help better understand how tourism can be developed sustainably. The courses are offered free on a non academic credit basis. Participants may take these courses to build your own knowledge of the field of tourism and development.