On 22 March 2019, the Tourism School of the OUC was signed and officially established. The school was built through a collaboration between the Open University of China (OUC) and National Public Service Platform. Its aim is to support the development of China's tourism talent education, promote the transformation and upgrading of China's tourism industry, and become a new platform for the open growth of tourism talents, a new hope for the development of practitioners, and a new driving force for the industry's development.
The School of Tourism mainly enrols in-service personnel in the cultural and tourism industry for degree education and issues nationally recognised degree certificates. The school currently offers three specialized programmes in business management, tourism management, and hotel management, and will set up different types of programmes in the future, such as undergraduate programmes in business management and hotel management, and a specialized programme in study tour management and services. The learning method is mainly online, and to solve the problems of face-to-face counseling and exams, the school has set up many learning centres throughout the country, making it more convenient for students to learn and better meet the needs of academic upgrading for tourism industry practitioners across the country.
In the field of non-degree education, the school is currently working with local tourism departments and some large tourism enterprises to carry out education and training for industry employees and develop training course resources. The school is also responsible for compiling different tourism talent standards for the tourism industry association and actively developing related professional skill certificates.
The school is committed to achieving supported open learning and strives to build a lifelong education platform for degree and non-degree education in the tourism industry, promoting the formation of a lifelong education system for the tourism industry.