To this end, in 1998, the UNWTO Education and Training Department and the UNWTO.Themis Foundation created what is now the fundamental pillar of the Programme: the UNWTO.TedQual Certification System, which is composed of a series of evaluation criteria - universally applicable to any tourism education, training and research programme -  that makes it possible to measure the effectiveness of the pedagogical system as well as to which extent are covered the needs of the tourism sector, civil society and the students in such programmes.

The UNWTO.TedQual Programme also relies on other pillars, such as the UNWTO.TedQualNetwork, a platform for promotion and the exchange of knowledge and experiences among the UNWTO.TedQual Institutions that has made it possible to create two sub-programmes: the UNWTO.TedQual Exchange programme and the UNWTO.TedQual Mentoring programme.

• UNWTO.TedQual Exchange is an initiative focused on the UNWTO.TedQual Institutions, whose objective is to promote the exchange of students and professors, and to encourage joint research work between the UNWTO.TedQual Institutions and the UNWTO.Themis Foundation.
• UNWTO.TedQual Mentoring is an initiative that seeks to promote collaboration between the UNWTO.TedQual Institutions and other tourism education institutions in less-developed countries, with the central objective of improving and/or creating new education programmes in tourism.