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Academia Programme · 2026–27

A partnership between universities and the destination industry.

For tourism and hospitality faculties, this builds direct pathways into industry and closes the curriculum gap through applied learning, leadership skills development and AI education that equips faculty and students alike with the capabilities the sector is hiring for.

Chat to usHow the partnership works
Why it matters now

AI capability is now a baseline requirement for tourism graduates.

Pathways into industry

Students take on live briefs submitted by national, regional and city tourism organisations, present to industry audiences at FRONTIERS and have their work published through the DTTT network under their own name.

Applied learning

Briefs are scoped directly with the organisation, researched inside DTTT's methodology and reviewed before delivery, so the work meets the standard the organisation was expecting.

Leadership skills

Scoping a brief, exercising judgement under real constraints, presenting recommendations to senior professionals. The capabilities that carry graduates into senior roles, built through the work itself.

AI education for faculty and students

The Digital Literacy for Effective AI course and AI Transparency Framework certification, delivered through the institution's own learning management system, with unlimited faculty and staff access alongside the student cohort.

This runs as an annual partnership on the academic calendar. Once the initial configuration is complete, it operates through student curriculum activity.

Graduate outcomes

Graduates equipped for leadership in an AI-first industry.

01
Certification

Professional certification in AI governance

Students graduate holding the DTTT AI Transparency Framework certification, the sector-specific credential for AI in destination management.

A recognised and precise qualification in a field their future employers are actively navigating.

02
Experience

Advisory and consulting experience

Students work as consultants on live challenges from real destination organisations: scoping briefs, conducting research and delivering recommendations to a professional standard.

The advisory skills that distinguish graduates entering senior career pathways.

03
Track record

A published track record before graduation

Sprint outputs and Applied Research briefs are published through the DTTT network with named student attribution.

Graduates enter the industry with visible, circulated work rather than a folder of academic exercises.

What the partnership includes

One annual partnership, three components.

Partner institutions hold a single annual partnership covering the academic year: the curriculum and certification strand delivered through your LMS, year-round intelligence and network access, plus participation in the annual FRONTIERS event.

AI Skills and Certification
In your LMS, assessed as curriculum
+

The Digital Literacy for Effective AI course and the ATF certification strand, delivered through your existing LMS.

What it includes
01
Digital Literacy for Effective AI course, LMS-integrated and maintained by DTTT
02
AI Transparency Framework teaching materials, exercises and assessment frameworks
03
ATF micro-credentials issued to students on completion of the assessed components
04
Annual programme summary, written for institutional reporting

Industry intelligence, framework updates and network connections running through the whole academic year.

What it includes
01
Quarterly intelligence briefings
02
ATF framework updates and new curriculum materials as they are released
03
DTTT event streams, live and as recordings
04
Applied Research challenge bank, open across the year for adoption as live briefs or dissertation projects
05
Introductions to other partner institutions in the network

The one physical gathering point in the partnership year.

What it includes
01
Student and academic staff places at the annual event
02
Published sprint outputs, co-attributed to the institution
The academic year rhythm

How the partnership runs across a year.

Before the year starts
LMS configuration and curriculum mapping. Certification strand set up.
Across the year
Quarterly intelligence briefings. Applied Research challenges open for adoption. Framework updates released.
March
FRONTIERS. Two days. Applied Research opens for its next intake.
Year end
Annual programme summary issued to the institution.
The curriculum foundation

Digital Literacy for Effective AI.

Eleven tracks covering the digital knowledge required to use AI well in a professional tourism context. Written for practitioners, not developers.

Runs inside Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas and Brightspace. The Tourism Edition is available now; a Higher Education Edition is in development.

Tracks
11
Modules
~70
Per module
15-35
min
The eleven tracks
01 / 11
T0

Getting started

A short diagnostic that places each student at the right entry point, so the course adapts to what they already know.

T1

How the web works

What actually happens between a URL and a page: DNS, hosting, APIs and the security basics every digital professional is assumed to understand.

T2

Content and code

Enough HTML and CSS to read a page with confidence, plus how content systems and no-code platforms structure and publish work.

T3

Images, media, formats

Formats, resolution, compression and colour, plus what changes when the asset was generated rather than captured.

T4

Data fundamentals

How data is structured, joined and cleaned, plus how to judge whether a dataset can carry the decision being asked of it.

T5Career-critical

AI mechanics

What is actually happening inside the systems: models, tokens, context, embeddings, retrieval and agents, all explained without the marketing.

T6

Connecting AI to your work

Wiring AI into real workflows through integrations, automations and assistants, plus recognising where the limits sit.

T7Career-critical

Judgement and risk

Evaluating outputs critically, handling privacy and copyright questions, plus assessing vendors without being misled.

T8

Publishing, end to end

How work reaches an audience: publishing pipelines, analytics and how discovery itself is changing.

T9

Workflow and daily practice

The habits that make AI genuinely useful day to day, from prompting through to how a team adopts a tool together.

T10

Sector track: Tourism

Destination management, digital strategy and AI in the tourism context. A Higher Education Edition is in development.

AI Transparency Framework certification

Developing the next generation of destination management leaders.

The certification gives students the strategic grounding to evaluate, govern and communicate AI use in a professional destination management context: the application of AI tools, critical assessment of outputs, disclosure practice and the governance frameworks destination organisations are beginning to build.

Students who complete it leave with an understanding of AI that goes beyond tool familiarity. They can make strategic decisions about which tools to use, advise on governance and engage credibly with the questions their future employers are navigating now.

Visit the AI Transparency Framework
TM
Transparency Model
PM
Productivity Model
CI
Content Integrity
MM
Maturity Model
Why it counts
Sector-specific

Developed specifically for tourism bodies, all tools focus directly on everyday destination operations and management.

Professionally recognised

The standard referenced by DTTT members and destination management organisations across the network.

Assessable

Full teaching materials, exercises and assessment frameworks provided to partner institutions.

Curriculum-embedded

Sits within the Digital Literacy for Effective AI course, not a standalone extra.

Career-portable

Students hold the credential when they leave, independent of their institution.

Applied Research Programme

Students as consultants on live industry challenges.

DMOs can submit live operational briefs to high-performing academic teams for comprehensive analysis. Governed by rigorous DTTT oversight frameworks, these engagements produce high-impact strategic deliverables and practical resources that directly support tourism goals.

Challenge to publication Five stages
Destination organisation

Industry submits a challenge

A structured intake form covering the challenge, its context, the data available and what a useful output looks like. Reviewed and categorised by DTTT before it reaches any cohort.

Output
A scoped challenge in the bank
For industry partners

Organisations submit through a structured form covering the challenge, context, available data and what a useful output looks like. Underdefined submissions are returned for clarification. DTTT reviews for scope and feasibility, matches the brief to a cohort, then documents the outcome with both client and student team.

Submit a challenge
Quality controls

Why this is not a student project.

Five controls sit between a submitted challenge and a delivered recommendation. They are what make the work a professional engagement rather than a classroom exercise.

Every brief passes through all five, in order.

Control 01

Defined AI frameworks

Students work inside DTTT's own methodology, which structures how research is conducted and how outputs are framed.

Control 02

Client alignment stage

Teams clarify the brief directly with the organisation before any work begins, exactly as a consultancy would.

Control 03

DTTT quality review

Every output is reviewed before delivery, against the standard the client was expecting.

Control 04

Published attribution

The strongest work is published as DTTT intelligence with the student team and institution named.

Control 05

Advisory skills

The process builds the capabilities graduates need in client-facing roles, not just research technique.

Only work that clears all five is delivered to a client and only the strongest of that is published.

Students working on live industry challenges at a DTTT event
FRONTIERS
Each September · week of World Tourism Day

Two days where the industry meets the cohort.

Students, academic staff and destination professionals in one room, around live challenges and the year's research.

Day one is public and student-facing. Day two is a closed working session for academic staff and industry practitioners. Both produce published outputs shared across the partner network.

Visit the FRONTIERS site
Day one
Students and industry · public
Day two
Staff and industry · closed

AI, work and careers in tourism

Four panels, then the cohort takes the stage in front of an industry audience.

Panel 01
The four-day working week
Panel 02
The Gen Z career divide
Panel 03
AI and employability
Panel 04
HR ethics and monitoring
Closing
Student Takeover: Masters design challenges, sprint outputs and thesis work presented to industry

A working day for staff and practitioners

Curriculum design and the AI Transparency Framework, with published outputs shared across all partner institutions.

Morning
Student pitches on client case studies
Parallel
Lecturer forum on teaching AI in tourism programmes
Afternoon
Collaborative curriculum design
Afternoon
AI Transparency Framework deep dive
Output
Materials published and shared across the partner network

FRONTIERS is structured as a student programme event. Participation as a module requirement, assessed live brief or curriculum field trip may sit differently within institutional travel and budget frameworks than standard conference attendance.

The network

A community for applied tourism education.

The programme connects institutions to the destination organisations working on the challenges their graduates will meet professionally.

Live challenges from destination organisations

Structured access to real questions organisations across Europe and beyond need help thinking through, not hypothetical briefs.

Direct contact with practitioners

Students and staff engage with the people hiring graduates, assessing research and setting the direction of the sector.

Reach extended through academic networks

Institutions bring their own networks in. Regional academic clusters and European applied sciences partnerships, RUN-EU among them, strengthen the model.

A community that does not yet exist

No network currently serves applied sciences tourism institutions on practice, skills and career outcomes. We are building it from 2026, so institutions joining now shape what it becomes.

IFITT serves research-oriented tourism academics well. This programme serves a different community: applied sciences institutions where the measure of success is graduate employability.

Annual reporting

What the programme produced, in writing.

Each year DTTT sends partner institutions a summary structured around outcomes rather than access metrics.

From September 2026 the ATF micro-credential becomes the primary certification metric: a named qualification issued to individual students on completion of the assessed components.

Reported each year
ATF certifications issued, by cohort and year
Applied research outputs published, with institutional co-attribution
Digital Literacy module completions across cohorts
Student work published with named attribution via the DTTT network
FRONTIERS sprint outputs and briefs developed
Partnership structure

How the partnership is structured for 2026–27.

Every partner institution holds the institutional layer. The cohort certification layer sits on top of it and scales with the number of students you put through the programme. The self-funded track sits alongside both, open to students whose institution is still considering the partnership.

Pricing is set in conversation against cohort size. We are working with a small founding cohort of institutions now, ahead of the September open intake.

Layer 01

Institutional Access

Everything your faculty needs to teach the programme: the course, the framework materials and the intelligence that keeps them current.

Digital Literacy for Effective AI, LMS-integrated
ATF curriculum materials and teaching resources
Unlimited faculty and staff access
Quarterly intelligence briefings and framework updates
DTTT event access for staff and students
Annual programme summary for institutional reporting
Layer 02

Student Cohort Certification

What the students themselves receive: the credential, the live briefs and a place at FRONTIERS.

ATF micro-credentials for enrolled students, from September 2026
Applied Research challenge access for enrolled cohorts
Student and staff places at FRONTIERS
Published sprint outputs co-attributed to the institution
Priced by cohort size, discussed in conversation
Runs alongside

Student Self-Funded Track

For students whose institution is still considering the partnership, the same certification and challenge access taken independently.

ATF certification pathway for individual students
Challenge bank access as an independent team
Eligible for FRONTIERS design sprint participation
Published outputs with named student attribution
How it starts

Four steps to September.

From a first conversation to your students working live briefs at FRONTIERS.

Step 01

Start a conversation

Your institution, your programme and which elements matter most. We scope from there.

Step 02

Map the integration

One focused call on your LMS, cohort size and how the certification strand fits your assessment structure.

Step 03

Set up and begin

LMS integration configured, certification strand initiated, institution registered for FRONTIERS.

September 2026

FRONTIERS

Your students in the Day 1 sprints, your staff in Day 2 curriculum work, then the first Applied Research intake opens.

Partner with us for 2026-27

Existing DTTT academia members join at their current rate as founding partners.

Discover how your institution can join our founding network. Reach out today to schedule a consultation with our Knowledge Team.

Chat to usReview the structure

Research, frameworks and field notes on destination transformation. No noise.

The industry brief, monthly

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Industry research, open frameworks and field-tested practice on how destinations lead through AI, sustainability and brand. Since 2012.

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