Tourism and Visitor Economy MSc
1 Year Full Time | September Start

In this module you will learn about a comprehensive range of research methods and business analytics techniques. This will equip you with the knowledge and practical skills necessary for you to conduct research at Masters’ level and prepare you to complete a Master’s Dissertation, Consultancy Project or Management Enquiry. By the end of the module you will know how to apply both quantitative and qualitative data collection and business analysis techniques. In quantitative techniques you will learn about sampling, questionnaire design, statistical inference, and hypothesis testing while qualitative techniques covered will include methods such as interviewing and focus groups. Analysis methods such as content analysis and thematic analysis will also be covered. In addition, you will gain some understanding of research philosophy (positivism and interpretivism) and research ethics and you will be able to write a research proposal to bring these ideas together.
Furthermore, this module will provide clear, critical, and analysis of data, you will also be able to consider the use of analytics implementation skills, where you will be introduced to analytics software such as SPSS. SPSS statistics analysis is one of the powerful solutions that is designed to help businesses and researchers to solve problems by various methods (geospatial analysis, predictive analytics and hypothesis testing).

In this module you will gain an understanding of the academic skills that are required to produce a Masters Dissertation. By the end of the module you will have written a 15000 word Masters dissertation. The areas included are:

• Justification for the choice of topic
• Appropriate understanding, awareness and critical analysis of existing and up to date literature evidenced by a comprehensive and well-referenced literature review with an extensive reference list
• Selection, justification and application of an appropriately rigorous methodology - including limitations of the approach selected
• Clear statement of the findings of the research
• Critical analysis of the findings
• Explicit links between the analysis and the conclusions supported by critical argument
• Evidence of original work or thought for example in the form or context of the data collected, analytical process or application of findings

The Masters’ Management Enquiry module is a student-led individual project that enables you to undertake a significant piece of assessed

work commensurate with a capstone module and is offered as an alternative to the Masters’ Dissertation and Masters’ Consultancy Project.

The module aims to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate an authentic engagement with managers and/or professionals in your

discipline (this enquiry has to be discipline specific), and to integrate the knowledge you have developed during your programme to explore

the theory in practice. The learning on this module is experiential and problem based, where the focus is upon you discovering, probing and

questioning key practice-based issues. Through the module you will be offered the opportunity to develop and enhance key transferable

employability skills including; time management, project management, communication (written, aural and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and

influence, discovery, initiative, problem-solving and analysis.


The module has five thematic areas; explore, review, engage, reflect and connect. These form the key elements of the assessed submission

which is a single 15,000 word report.


Part A (35%, 5,000-5,500 words)

Explore: Interviewing a manager and/or professional in your discipline. In this interview you will either explore a key issue which you feel the

discipline is facing or, alternatively, explore with the manager or professional the key issues that they feel they are facing in practice. It is

expected that you will apply non-verbatim documented conversation and provide evidence of the key ideas emerging within the submitted

enquiry report (e.g. within the appendices).

Review: Critically examining the academic and practitioner literature to support the exploration, displaying an ability to critically assess and

appraise the knowledge of your discipline related to a specific key issue arising from your exploration.


Part B (65%, 9,500-10,000 words)

Engage: Displaying an authentic engagement with the discipline problem/issue identified in Part A, by collecting/generating and analysing

further live data (beyond the initial interview) regarding the discipline problem/issue. This live data may be primary data (e.g. further interviews

with, or questionnaire to, managers and/or professionals in practice) or secondary data (e.g. industry data). Application of appropriate,

ethically-considered, research methods and appropriate qualitative or quantitative data analysis.

Reflect and Connect: Demonstrating an ability to critically evaluate and reflect on the issues arising from the Management Enquiry.

Demonstrating how you have connected and fed-back to the participants of the Enquiry (usually the manager and/or participants) your key

findings to provide clear prioritised, well-justified, practical and actionable recommendations for change/enhancement/improvement to existing

practice to show how the recommendations would potentially affect workplace professional decision making.

This module aims to increase your awareness and understanding of the issues and challenges of starting up and operating a small business and being entrepreneurial. As entrepreneurship requires a strong focus on practice, this will be achieved by providing you with a practical insight into setting up and trading as a small business, raising awareness of self-employment as a viable career option. You will learn about entrepreneurship as a process, the entrepreneurial person, ideation, and opportunity recognition, pitching and presenting, business planning, idea validation, resource acquisition, market analysis, customers and selling, entrepreneurial marketing, networking, and accelerators, incubation, and support. You will learn how to identify, explore, and progress your own business idea and be supported in your experience of planning this idea over the course of the module, recognising patterns and opportunities in complex situations and environments. At the end of this module, you will have a deeper understanding of real-life entrepreneurial issues and how they can be addressed. The development of entrepreneurial awareness, capability and mind-set which the module seeks to promote lends itself to application not only in new venture creation or development but also within traditional employment contexts.

There is currently no summary for this module.

There is currently no summary for this module.

In this module, you will study the concept of place, culture and creativity in cities worldwide.
Our contention is that people make places, and to an extent, places make people. In the module, students explore how spaces become meaningful places for leisure and consumption around the world as a result of what people (tourists, entrepreneurs, residents, policymakers, captains of industry) do. Students will be introduced to concepts on place-making, including the creation of contemporary bohemia / neo-bohemian cultural quarters aimed at the and day to night-time economy alongside creative and heritage industries, and cultural performances. Some of the themes to be studied include the significance of placemaking as cultural production and consumption, from the glossy, large-scale mega-development of event spaces, concert halls and sports grounds to more grass-roots community engaged bohemian entrepreneurs and sole operators.

This module aims to increase your awareness and understanding of the issues and challenges of hospitality and tourism in a global context – that is in relation to flows of capital and people around the world. You will learn about globalisation as an economic, social and cultural process and how hospitality and tourism, in all their different elements and incarnations, are part of that process. Through this you will be able to explore these industries thoroughly with a view of beginning to think how you may want to develop a career within them, and where. At the end of this module, you will have a deeper understanding of real-life issues around globalisation – from economic, social and cultural, and to an extent environmental - and how the tourism and hospitality industries are both shaped and shape them. The development of this awareness can not only encourage you to think about future careers in these exciting industries but potential business opportunities too.

This is a 20-credit module running in the second semester of the programme and is developed for those of you who have prior awareness of some marketing within Tourism, Hospitality and Events management that seek a deeper understanding of contemporary issues of Marketing in SME’s.

This is a 20-credit module running in the second semester of the programme. The module will cover three main areas of learning: Environmental impacts of tourism and climate change, Sustainable principles and practice and green forms of consumerism in tourism and hospitality.
The first part will review the range of social and environmental impacts in tourism and hospitality sector both at a local and a global level. This first part will extensively cover debates surrounding climate change. You will learn how tourism contributes and is affected by climate change as well as the implications for the future of the sector.
The second part will start with a more theoretical discussion on sustainable tourism development as a contested concept and the various principles underpinning the debate.. It will consider the notion of sustainability in both local and global contexts as well as its application to the hospitality industry. You will learn about Environmental Management Systems in tourism and hospitality, Community involvement in the development of sustainable tourism, sustainable transport and hospitality and Food and beverage waste management systems.
The third part will explore various forms of green consumerism in tourism and hospitality that respond to these environmental challenges. The discussion will range from changing lifestyles and the 'new tourist to Ecotourism, Eco-ethics and other alternative forms of tourism such as slow food movement. It will also discuss how to inflict sustainability in mainstream tourism and hospitality practices. You will also learn about the convergence of mass tourism and sustainability, the marketing for sustainability and sustainability practices within the hospitality industry.

This module is an optional capstone module for students on the MSc International Hospitality and Tourism Management programme who are considering starting up a business in this sector after graduation The focus of this module is to support you in developing your business idea into a real-life venture. To do this we will introduce you to venture creation topics with a focus on sales and marketing through weekly lectures. You will then apply these topics in creating a business plan for your own venture.
As well as learning how to develop your own venture you will explore what it is to become an entrepreneur. To support you in becoming an entrepreneur will also cover topics which will support the development of your entrepreneurial capabilities.

Central to the module is the development of a business plan for a new enterprise in hospitality or tourism focused on the ‘Business Model Canvas’ which is template or a simple representation of the core business model including key partners, value propositions, customers, costs and revenues. The workshops will introduce the idea of the business model canvas and guide you in developing the constituent elements. For example to develop the customer elements you will be introduced to customer profiling and segmentation, customer relationship development and the use of different channels to reach customers. Revenue streams will be explored by looking at what customers are willing to pay and the sales processes needed. The analysis of costs will be supported with some basic accounting.

Underpinning the business model is the value proposition and you will be challenged to identify the value you are delivering to the customer, how you propose to address their needs and the budling of products and services in the business model. The workshops introduce the topics and then by working in action learning sets you will challenge the approaches of your peers, but also you will be exposed to case studies from existing entrepreneurs.



Example topics which may be covered are:

Venture development topics

Lean start-up
Business model canvas
Developing your product/service portfolio
UK Company law and business structures
Developing business strategies
Customer profiling and market segmentation
Marketing for venture creation
Digital marketing
Sales processes for venture creation


Entrepreneurial capabilities topics
Goal setting and growth
Developing critical reflection techniques
Developing a growth mindset
Experiential and self-directed learning
Principles of coaching