EDUCATION

Tourism Future Box

The Tourism Future Box contains innovative educational materials on the future of tourism. These were developed by Helga Mayr (PH Tirol) and Christian Baumgartner (response&ability), based on the Future Boxes from futurium, the House of Futures in Berlin, and are freely available in both German and English.

They can be used flexibly in teaching and instruction:

  • individual methods in single or multiple courses or teaching units and/or
  • several methods combined within the framework of project days

The Future Box contains: a guide, various card sets (trend cards for developing scenarios, megatrend cards, perspective cards, wildcards, challenge cards, impulse question cards, a quick-start guide, and individual method descriptions).

An application in the form of a three-day Climate Change, Tourism and Sustainable Development Bootcamp is described in the guide. During the bootcamp, participants search for traces of climate change in the context of tourism and sustainable development, discuss with experts, conduct interviews, develop possible scenarios, and finally create a vision for the tourism of the future. Based on knowledge of the current situation and possible developments, as well as their own visions, they formulate specific challenges or problems for which they ultimately develop and prototypically implement solutions in teams.

Future Box 1

Download guide

Guide

The guide includes background information on

  • futures research,
  • the (possible) future of tourism in the context of climate change and sustainable development,
  • the card sets of the Future Box (see Developing Scenarios with the Future Box and Extensions of Scenario Technique),
  • the Tourism, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Bootcamp as a three-day application of the Future Box,
  • futurium, the House of Futures in Berlin as the source of inspiration for the format and the project partners

Developing Scenarios with the Future Box

The heart of the Future Box consists of the trend cards, which describe possible developments in the categories of destinations, travel motives, mobility, population, work, nutrition, and businesses. They can be used in a playful way to create and discuss various future scenarios and can be supplemented with one’s own developments using joker cards.

Download scenarios

Download extensions

Extensions of Scenario Technique

Additional card sets allow you to deepen the scenarios or can be used regardless of the format and the project partners

Megatrend Cards: 10 cards each describe powerful trends that shape society in the long term. Central questions: How do these megatrends affect (the future of) tourism? What consequences do the trends have for a previously created future scenario?

Perspective Cards: the 14 perspective cards enable a multi-perspective view of scenarios and/or megatrends. The perspectives of politics, civil society, local population, economy, entrepreneurs, guests, and the environment are each represented by two personas who have different views on the topic. Central questions: How do the individual personas want (the future of) tourism to be? Why? What consequences are associated with this? What areas of tension arise due to the different viewpoints? Why? …

Wildcards: 5 cards describe extreme/unexpected future events or developments. Central question: How does the event/development affect the scenarios?

Challenge Cards: each of the 5 cards contains a challenge formulated as a “How might we…” question, which serves as a starting point for the co-creative development of solution ideas.

Impulse Questions: the 5 impulse question cards each contain a provocative question on the topic that learners must answer with either “YES” or “NO,” even though this is not easily possible. They then discuss the topic.

Methods related to the Future Box

The Tourism, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Bootcamp follows a design thinking process: from research on the current situation and possible trends to the development of visions for the tourism of the future, the formulation of a specific challenge, and the generation of concrete solutions. The 17 methods can also be used individually.

Download methods

This post is also available in: German