As in previous years, we will once again be carrying out the
Travel Action Days together with Naturfreunde Internationale.

The project focuses on the topic of „CONSCIOUS TRAVEL” , with special emphasis on the needs and
expectations of the local population. We want to gain an understanding of what people expect from
tourists and tourism – and what they explicitly do not want.

Our goals are:
 

• to sharpen the awareness of travelers and employees in the travel industry that destinations are, first and foremost, living spaces for people, animals, and plants, and that tourism can only function sustainably on the basis of participation and acceptance;
   

• to design tourism services in a way that is aligned with the needs of local residents and encourages travelers to once again be perceived as guests, ensuring that both visitors and host communities benefit from tourism;
   

• to raise travelers’ awareness of how their behavior can contribute to ensuring that the environment and local communities benefit sustainably from their visit;
   

• to enable as many apprentices in tourism-related professions (and students from tourism schools) as possible to gain an impression of what local populations expect from tourism and visitors.

​

Our students engage intensively with sustainable tourism in class and deepen their knowledge, among other things, through a workshop with Respect/NFI before we begin working together on our goals.To this end, we will conduct surveys in various destinations and habitats, analyze the results, and present our findings to representatives of the Austrian tourism industry during our final event.

When selecting the destinations, we take a pragmatic approach: on the one hand, we look “on our own doorstep” in Vienna and other Austrian provinces, and on the other hand, we use the first-ever development of a tourism development plan for a region in the Philippines as an opportunity to conduct a survey among local residents. This also gives us the exciting opportunity to examine destinations and living environments under very different conditions.

We are very curious to learn about the expectations of the inhabitants of the world’s most livable city (~20 million overnight stays per year) regarding tourists and tourism, and how these differ from the expectations of residents in a small community in the Philippines where tourism has so far played no role at all. In Palapag (Northern Samar), we will work together with a local NGO (Sarayo Forests) and the responsible municipal administration to explore, through surveys, how the population perceives tourism and which direction the “Tourism Development Plan” could take.

If resources and project progress permit, we would also like to collect perspectives from other regions. The insights gained from the surveys will then be analyzed, evaluated, and prepared by our learners – travel agency assistants and rail travel & mobility service assistants.

During our final event (a BARCAMP on 07 May 2026), they will present their results to representatives of the Austrian travel and tourism industry.
Based on the collected data, we want to work together with our guests in the BARCAMP format to identify feasible measures and develop concrete solution approaches (for the travel industry) and recommendations for action (for travelers). As part of the class work, this event will also be planned and carried out by our students in collaboration with teachers and the school management. One group, accompanied and guided by a professional, will produce a podcast for a radio broadcast.