1st  TOURIST Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam

On 3^rd and 4^th December 2019, the International Conference “Sustainable Tourism Development for Southeast Asia: Lessons learned for South East Asian countries” took place at the Hilton Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, hosted by the VNU University of Social Sciences and Humanities. The conference was attended by around 120 participants, from more than 20 countries worldwide. Following the official welcome by Prof. Pham Quang Minh, Rector of the USSH, VNU Hanoi, the project coordinator presented the new-founded online TOURIST Network, as the main knowledge exchange platform on sustainable tourism and innovative financial management strategies in Southeast Asia and internationally.

The main topics of the conference were: Conceptualization of sustainable tourism development, stakeholder participation in sustainable tourism development, different forms of sustainable tourism and planning and managing sustainable tourism development. The University of Alicante was represented by Dr. Oana M. Driha, Assist. Professor, Department of Applied Economics International Economy, Institute of Tourism Research who made the presentation “Economic growth and Tourism: ways towards a more sustainable tourism?” and OGPI Senior Project Manager, Noelia López.

TOURIST Project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, aims at promoting sustainable tourism concepts and transfer knowledge on innovative financial management strategies to HEIs in SEA to benefit from tourism in a sustainable way in the future. It aims to enhance the university-business cooperation in the tourism industry to foster the concept of sustainable tourism, increase teaching quality and in the long-run to increase the employability of graduates due to an up-to-date education.