Changing Approaches to Education, Innovation and Research in Tourism

Web 2.0 provides opportunities to rethink and reorganise the knowledge interaction and dissemination between industry, education and research. As Web 2.0 and 3.0 are only emerging there is still no striking evidence to support this assumption. Accordingly, the purposes of the paper are to first discuss the challenges in tourism education and address in brief the declining role of universities as knowledge monopolies and the emerging role as open knowledge mediators. Next, we present open innovation paradigms and address the issues of knowledge accumulation and dissemination in tourism and the new role of the university. This is followed by a presentation of the concept of INNOTOUR, which is an experimental hub for innovation in tourism. Finally, we point out challenges for collaboration in the international tourism research and teaching community. In this process, there is a compelling need to build grounded theory and consolidated practice that will advance the quality and efficiency in tourism education though the use of a wide span of interactive technologies, and committed teaching methods. Thereby it is envisaged that new educational and scientific collaborative practices will be developed that will build interdisciplinary bridges across several international campuses.