Developing undergraduates’ research competences through a tourism destination management course

ABSTRACT The levels of complexity and the changing environment in which the tourism industry operates, require critical and reflective tourism practitioners. Consequently, and considering the need for students to develop analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills, this article explores the research experiences of undergraduate students, focusing on the process of developing an independent, inquiry-based project. This paper describes a research project developed by two classes of undergraduate students majoring in tourism, providing an overview of the implementation of the project and of students’ perceptions on this experience. Results suggest that adopting a research-based learning approach promotes students’ engagement with research practices and increases intellectual capacity, which may prove useful to other tourism educators in developing competence-based courses.