Course description
Introduction
The MSc Hospitality and Tourism Services Management is an advanced level management-focussed degree, using an intensive tourism and services-related approach to prepare students for a range of professional management opportunities within hospitality, travel, and other tourism-related service sectors. It is built on a mixture of strong business and social scientific frameworks, which provide good analytical tools for those seeking to work at a high level within hospitality or travel.
Despite some recent setbacks through political and terrorism problems, tourism continues to grow as a human activity. The World Tourism Organisation predicts that international tourist numbers will double over the next fifteen years, and tourism-related activities are also accounting for an increased share of GDP in many countries. The bulk of employment within tourism is in hospitality and travel enterprises, with their key focus on service, which means there is an increasing requirement for sophisticated managers and analysts.
Units
Certificate Level
Hospitality Operations Management
This unit examines the hospitality function and the management of its operations. It takes models and theories of hospitality from the paradigms of hospitality systems and social context, including backgrounds of ethics and culture. From these, the unit extracts the functional areas that require management and applies management methods and skills into those areas. The importance of human resources, financial and stock accountability, and property and asset management, is emphasised throughout the unit. This is overlaid on other functional areas such as lodging, food and beverage, events and functions. Special attention is given to hospitality issues relating to women, the disabled and older people.
This unit is a key certificate stage unit to enable students to understand and assess the management needs of the various main areas of hospitality at a postgraduate level. It focuses on production as a complement to the consumer focus of the marketing unit, and it prepares students for the analysis of strategic management in the hospitality industry that follows at the diploma stage.
Services Marketing
The purpose is to introduce students to the fundamentals of and recent developments in services marketing, with a particular emphasis on contemporary practice within the travel and hospitality fields.
The unit will survey the landscape of the services economy and its product placement requirements. Fields of particular attention will include retailing, travel, hospitality, and financial services. It then moves into an informed survey of marketing basics - product, price, place, promotion, people, processes. This survey serves as a lead-in to consideration of the role of human resources (people) and approaches to marketing communications (processes) in fashioning a relationship-based strategy within a contemporary service industry.
International Transport and Travel
The aim of this unit is to develop the student’s awareness of the principles of international transport management and to provide students with an understanding of the relationship and interface between international transport and tourism activities. The unit further explores the effective implementation of transport policies and evaluates the effect of the implementation of transport policies on the development of international tourism. This unit will require students to be critical of current research and practice relating to transport and to consider a range of ethical dimensions relating to transport policy.
Management Finance
This unit is intended to give a basic introduction to financial accounting and financial management. It covers diverse areas such as management accounting, pure finance and accounting, and is intended to acquaint a non-specialist with financial managerial skills.
The unit is designed to familiarise students with the key principles of and practices in the areas of finance. It aims to encourage students to develop critical thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of diverse practices which modern-day managers need to address issues of management accounting, financial analysis and introductory finance which face the firm.
Diploma Stage
Students may select any two out of the three marked electives
Strategy for Hospitality (elective)
Hospitality providers, whether independent businesses or domestic / international groups, operate in an environment characterised by increasing globalisation and ever more intense competition. Therefore, in order to survive, compete and succeed within this environment, hospitality organisations need to implement effective strategic management policies and processes that reflect organisational goals and objectives. The overall purpose of this unit is to critically examine the theory and practice of strategic thinking, management and decision-making within hospitality. Building upon the micro analysis of hospitality operations at the certificate stage, it emphases the fundamental importance of strategy to organisational success, analysing both the competitive advantage and resource-based perspectives on strategy. The unit goes on to explore the strategic options available to hospitality organisations and the managerial issues encountered in implementing chosen strategies.
Tourism Service and Hospitality Management (compulsory unit)
A key and increasingly important aspect of tourism experiences is the commoditisation and provision of direct personal services to tourists. These include not only the well-documented services of hospitality but also services such as ‘movement management’ (e.g. attractions queuing or airport passenger handling), guiding and site interpretation, and retail advice and help. Increasingly, a scientific and social scientific approach to the analysis and management of person-to-person services is being taken internationally, and this is reflected within this unit.
This unit examines the management of the personal services function within the general context of international tourism. It takes models and theories of service and hospitality from the paradigms of service systems and social context. From these, the unit extracts the functional areas that require management and applies management methods and skills into those areas. The importance of human resource management within hospitality and tourism enterprises providing direct service, especially in terms of the service encounter and quality management, is emphasised throughout the unit. This is overlaid on other functional areas such as marketing, tour guiding, retailing, attraction, food and beverage, accommodation and financial management. The unit concludes with an analysis of the strategic role of service and hospitality within the wider international tourism context.
Airports for Tourism (elective)
The aim of this unit is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of past strategic planning of airport systems and to attempt to provide guidance on how the concept of strategic system planning can be used to advantage in the future with a view to the development of international airports designed for modern age international tourism. In so doing, the unit provides an international, comprehensive and systemic approach to airport management and one which is intended to minimize the negative aspects experienced by tourists when passing through the world’s airports. Strategic planning needs careful integration into the entire airport development process. Here the stress is on the need to improve the front end of the process by providing appropriate airport facilities, recognizing that an airport's strategic plan needs to be set in an understanding of the airport's role within a tourism system and that system planning is a vital part of the process. The unit explores the evolving context of airport planning and its response to the needs of the modern day tourist. Case histories of experiences in the USA, UK, EU and elsewhere are used. This unit requires students to be critical of current research and practice relating to airport dynamics and to consider a range of dimensions relating to policy and practice.
Advanced Tourism Research Methods (compulsory unit)
This unit seeks to develop student competency in research methodology to Masters level. Students are encouraged to develop not only as reflexive tourism researchers but also as critical practitioners; who can critically evaluate and (re) interpret evidence presented in published sources.
Contemporary debates and controversies within the tourism journals will be used to facilitate a critical discussion of the epistemological and ontological assumptions of published tourism research. Such debates will also be used to facilitate a critical understanding of issues like reflexivity, triangulation, ethics, validity and reliability. Whilst it is assumed that most students will have some knowledge and understanding of the classical methods of qualitative and quantitative data collection in social research, these will be reappraised. The unit seeks to expose students to a balance of qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. In the context of qualitative data students will learn how to conduct conversational analysis, discourse analysis and grounded theory; using computer software where appropriate. The general linear model (GLM) will be used to explain the principles and procedures of multivariate statistical modelling; with students being exposed to regression, factor and path analytical models using SPSS.
Contemporary Tourism Sectoral Study (elective)
This unit is offered as an elective for those students who can demonstrate a very strong interest in a specific tourism or hospitality-related context not covered elsewhere within the MSc Hospitality and Tourism services Management programme, and where a guided taught unit would clearly be required.
The aim of this unit is to permit students to select ONE contemporary key sector, aspect or activity within hospitality and tourism, and to apply critical thinking, analysis and problem solving within the chosen context. Examples of such contexts might be gastronomy, cyber-marketing, consumer law, international hospitality strategy, cultural or media representation, if suitable academic expertise is available in the University.
This unit requires students to be critical of current research and practice relating to specific hospitality or tourism issues or activities, and to consider a range of dimensions relating to policy and practice.
Masters Stage
Dissertation
The dissertation provides the opportunity to demonstrate the ability to reflect critically on the aspects of hospitality and tourism discussed in the programme. The vehicle will be the researching and writing of a dissertation, based on the research proposal formulated during the pre-requisite unit. The dissertation is the capstone of the MSc learning process, and allows the student to demonstrate mastery in scholarship of a hospitality or tourism management-related topic that they have selected in amalgamation with supervisory tutors.
Key Features
The programme offers graduates the opportunity of study in a truly international environment with students from differing cultural backgrounds. There is an international focus to all tourism-related programs at the University of Lincoln, and we have key links with universities and with hospitality and travel organisations worldwide. Themes such as services management, hospitality theory and business analysis run throughout the programmes. The programme is strongly based in cutting-edge research and management activity undertaken by faculty members, visiting faculty and industry managers, and that reported in the current literature. A three stage programme structure allows you to enter the course and progress through the programme in such a way that you maximise your individual and professional needs.
Mode of Study and Assessment
The course is designed for full time or part time study mode. Full-time students undertake study in four units during semester A and four units in semester B. Each unit will involve 3 hours of class contact time and 6 of directed learning. Therefore you will be expected to attend 12 hours of class contact per week and 24 hours of directed learning per week. In addition you will also meet with your tutors and programme leader for independent tutorials as required. Part-time students would normally take two units per semester.
In the final term, students will be working independently on their dissertation project. Whilst there may be some formal class contact during this time, private meetings with the dissertation supervisor will be arranged.
