Phygital tourism in travel and tourism education: a backward-designed framework for sustainable entrepreneurship learning

Tourism encounters integrate physical settings, digital interfaces, and embodied participation, challenging curricula to connect technological change with responsible value creation. This conceptual article develops a framework for sustainable entrepreneurship learning in undergraduate travel and tourism education. An integrative synthesis links theoretically relevant scholarship on phygital tourism, constructive alignment, backward design, design thinking, entrepreneurship education, sustainability competence, and digital inequality. The Sustainable Phygital Tourism Learning Framework combines a three-space encounter diagnostic, five provisional merger mechanisms, and four developmental stages: sense and map; discover and design; prototype and iterate; and scale, partner, and govern. EntreComp, GreenComp, and selected Sustainable Development Goals inform competency expectations and assessment criteria. A bounded classroom implementation proposal and weighted rubric illustrate assessment of diagnosis, inclusion, feasibility, experimentation, ethical judgment, and reflection. The contribution is a curriculum design proposal, not evidence of intervention effectiveness. Future research should evaluate assessment reliability, learning outcomes, resource requirements, and transferability.