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MBA - Tourism Management

Aimed at existing industry professionals seeking to optimise their career potential, our MBA in Tourism Management is designed in consultation with regional and national businesses operating in a range of sectors across the tourism industry.

Develop an operational and strategic understanding of tourism management, in line with modern challenges and issues confronting businesses operating in this dynamic and fast moving industry.

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Accredited by:

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Tourism Management Institute

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Course Overview

The course provides you with the opportunity to enhance and extend your existing knowledge and expertise by focusing on the critical areas of success in the tourism industry. Each module provides you with a ‘toolkit’ for modelling what successful tourism sector provision looks like in this highly diverse industry with multiple stakeholders and widely differing agendas.

On this course you will...

  • Develop and deepen your knowledge and understanding of the tourism industry.
  • Examine cutting edge thinking and practice across the tourism sector.
  • Extend your critical thinking, conceptual thinking and reasoning skills relating to effective leadership and management within the tourism industry.
  • Enhance your employability, career potential and personal effectiveness.
  • Further develop and refine your ability to carry out independent research in the field of tourism management.
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Course Structure

What you will learn

On this programme, you will learn the relevant knowledge and understanding of organisations and the external context in which they operate. Develop the management and operational skills necessary to shape the dynamic and organic changes within your sector of the tourism industry. You will have the opportunity to explore a specialist area through a range of optional modules that explore the development, planning and management of specific businesses.

Throughout, you will learn to integrate new knowledge within both an organisational and departmental context. You will explore concepts of sustainability within the context of space and place, particularly the English Lake District. This programme will equip you with the tools you need to become an effective and successful manager and researcher.

Modules

In addition to the core modules that make up the programme, you may opt to study two modules that focus on a key sector of industry, allowing you to build your expertise as a manager and develop your creativity, problem solving, interpersonal and strategic thinking capabilities, ensuring that you can have a positive impact on any company you work for.

Explore our range of specialised pathways:

If you would like to develop your in-depth knowledge of a sector or a particular area of expertise, you can choose to study one of four specialist areas of study:

  • Heritage and Culture
  • Sustainable Tourism 
  • Cultural Events
  • Hotel Management

Each specialism has 2 unique modules which can be found listed below. If you choose one of the above specialised areas of study this will be reflected in your final award.

Compulsory modules
  • Tourism Innovation and Entrepreneurship
    Investigate the theory and practice of entrepreneurship within the tourism industry.
  • Destination Marketing
    Explore a range of concepts associated with destination marketing and the strategies that can be applied by destinations and businesses seeking to enhance their distinctiveness in a highly competitive marketplace.
  • Managing the Visitor Experience
    Consider the complexities associated with engaging the tourist/visitor across a range of settings and ‘servicescapes’ and identify the management interventions required to generate positive experiences and minimise impacts.
  • Contemporary Issues in Tourism Management
    Explore the often contradictory issues affecting the contemporary tourism industry with those of the consumers of the product.
  • Applied Research Methods
    Get prepared for industry-based research that can generate and justify innovative and practical solutions that have a positive impact on business performance.
  • Applied Industry Project
    Demonstrate you skills, knowledge and professionalism by working with an industry partner in a real world environment.
Pathway modules

Heritage and Culture

  • Managing Heritage Attractions
    Explore the increasing utilisation of heritage and cultural resources as visitor attractions in both urban and rural locations in the UK and abroad.
  • Regional Literary Tourism, Culture and Heritage
    Gain an understanding of the influence of key writers and literary texts on the development of a regional ‘place myth’ (Urry) and on subsequent literary tourism and cultural heritage.
Pathway modules

Sustainable Tourism

  • Sustainable and Strategic Collaboration in Tourism
    Investigate and apply the theory and practice of sustainability and collaboration in tourism related business settings.
  • Transformational Tourism
    Consider the most up to date thinking in relation to sustainable travel and tourism by focusing on the potential for tourism to transform organisations and destinations through increasingly greater levels of change.
Pathway modules

Cultural Events

  • Festival Management
    Explore all aspects of the event lifecycle from concept to delivery and identify the factors that contribute to a successful event.
  • Events and Rural Regeneration
    Work with a live client at a local level to evaluate the impacts of events; the challenges involved in managing stakeholder expectations and the implications for long term sustainability.
Pathway modules

Hotel Management

  • Strategic Hotel Management
    Develop the decision making skills attached to generating a strategic vision and managing business performance in an increasingly fragmented and dynamic operating environment.
  • Sustainable Supply Chain Management
    Consider the supply chain of all goods and services that culminate in the hotel guest experience and operate through business to business relationships that potentially combine to deliver sustainable improvements alongside financial performance.

Attend an Open Day at Cumbria

An Open Day is your opportunity to explore one of 5 campuses, meet your lecturers, and find out how the University of Cumbria could become your new home.

Take the next step towards achieving your dreams.
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