Mundus is the Latin word for "world." Mundus Institute was established in 1973 by Mundus Travel, the largest travel company in western North America. Mundus began by opening two colleges in the southwestern U.S. In 1977, Mundus Institute began making its tourism training curriculum available to other educational institutions . In 1983, Mundus introduced integrated computer-based training systems for each of the major airline reservation systems. By 1985, Mundus established 94 franchise colleges in 35 states. The Mundus-owned travel agencies became part of the Carlson Travel Group. Mundus Institute for Tourism Studies is now a subsidiary of Dennis L Foster, Inc. The Institute's curricula, software, and textbooks have been implemented by more than 18,000 colleges, universities, private schools, travel agencies, and corporations in 103 countries.

Over the last 30 years, Mundus has acheived the status of the world's largest educational institution in the field of travel and tourism studies. No other educational tools or curricula in this field have attained such a high level of validated effectiveness and industry acceptance. Mundus software and textbooks are distributed internationally through Global Marketing Partners in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa, Italy, India, Greece, the Middle East, China, and Latin America.