Shanghai Institute of Tourism incorporated with Urban Science and Tourism College of Shanghai Normal University in 2003. Shanghai Institute of Tourism is a dependant juridical entity. SIT is the earliest higher learning tourism institution with multi-level education, from associate degree program to PHD program and various in-service training.

Insisting on internationality-oriented and industry-based concept, SIT aims at cultivating students for tourism industry in various fields and contributing research achievements to tourism industry. Besides, SIT concentrates on improving teaching qualities and education capability by establishing mutual and beneficial relationship with tourism industry.

Being an affiliate member of the World Tourism Organization (WTO), the vice chairman of the executive committee of the Network of Asia and Pacific Education and Training in Tourism (APETIT), the chairman of education sub-commission of National Association of Higher Learning in Tourism, SIT ranked in the list of world famous tourism institutes.

SIT boasts of a well organized team, including full-time and part-time faculties. SIT has 160 faculties, among them, 50 have advanced professional certificates and 5 have senior technicians¡¯ certificates. A majority of faculties have obtained master degrees and doctoral degrees. And a good number of them have been sent abroad for further study or sent to enterprises for training. Some of them have become renowned discipline foregoers. SIT has cooperated with many famous international and domestic enterprises in building cooperated bases and intern bases.

SIT has a doctoral station for Environmental Science, and a doctoral program--Chinese Classic Literature Study (focused on tourism literature and culture), three master programs (Natural Geography, Human Geography, Tourism Management) and major in Curriculum and Teaching methodology of Geography Education, six undergraduate programs (Tourism Management, Geography Science, Resources and Environment & Urban and Rural Planning Management, Geographic Information System and Meetings & Events Management), eight associate degree programs (Hotel Management, Tourism Management, Tourism English, Tourism Japanese, Tourism Korean, Finance and Accounting, E-commerce Management, Culinary Arts and Catering Management). There are nearly 200 postgraduate students, 3,000 associate degree program students and 1500 undergraduates, a number of exchange students are from foreign countries, Hong Kong (China), Macao (China) and Taiwan (China), and more than 1300 trainee in various field every year.

Being the bachelor degree education high land of Meetings & Events Management and the innovation base of Shanghai tourism resources and culture, SIT has established Shanghai Tourism Standardization Research Office, Shanghai Legal System Research Office, Tourism Resources & Culture Renovation Base of Shanghai Normal University, Key Laboratory of City Biology & Environmental Remediation, Tourism Planning & Developing Research Center of Shanghai Normal University, City Biology & Environment Management Research Center of Shanghai Normal University, Research Center for Sino-Korea Sightseeing Culture, etc.. The SIT journal ¡°Tourism Science¡± is honored as a journal provider for ¡°China Social Science Citation Index¡±. The SIT library has a collection of over 300,000 books, and hundreds of journals and magazines from home and abroad. Well equipped with computer lab, language lab, simulated tour guide training room, housekeeping training room, bar training room, culinary training room, biochemistry lab, natural geography comprehensive lab, geography information system lab and environment lab covering over thirty thousand square meters, SIT boasts perfect facilities for teaching and scientific research.