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ABSTRACT This dissertation aims to demonstrate that academic institutions can play a major role in sustainable tourism development of the destinations where they are located, beyond their mere scientific and research dimension. For this purpose it highlights the role of the University as an organisation that can design and implement new alternative tourism products, such as international training weeks, incorporating sustainable tourism elements into academic or non-academic activities. The EU Lifelong Learning Programmes, Mobility schemes and promoting tools assist towards this direction, such as Erasmus+, which supports the mobility of the academic community and iMotion platform, which promotes such initiatives of European Universities. In this regard, a new tourism product was designed for the destination of Valencia, Spain, which was implemented by the local Faculty of Engineering (UPV), within the framework of an Erasmus+ staff training week. The philosophy of “Agua de Valencia” is based on the principles of sustainable development as they were formed after the ‘Europe 2020 Strategy’ and the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Elements of methodology of smart tourism specialization as well as tools of Geographic Information Systems were used in order to properly design and promote this new sustainable and alternative tourism product. The wide acceptance of “Agua de Valencia”, combined with the absence of similar programs in Greece, as well as the increasing demand for special interest tourism and the need to differentiate the existing tourist products, has lead to the idea of Greek Universities’ active participation into the field of educational/ scientific tourism. More specifically, for the region of Northern Greece, the dissemination of “Agua de Valencia” results requires the exploitation of knowledge capital of the research laboratory “Tourlab” for designing similar programmes for all specific destinations in the location area of the recently established International University of Greece, in cooperation with the other Departments and European Programmes Offices. Multiple benefits of such programmes are expected for the University, the environment, the economy and the local community of the specific destinations, maximizing at the same time the satisfaction of educated and thus responsible tourists of the international academic community.