Master of Business Administration (Sustainable Tourism)

Overview

Studied on campus or 100% online, this MBA is designed to develop your skills and provide a critical understanding of different approaches to sustainable tourism management. You will have the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills in traditional and contemporary tourism planning approaches, such as Environmental Impact Assessment, monitoring and forecasting demand, and increasing tourist satisfaction. The course will embrace contemporary debates and challenges, and facilitate implementation in destinations and industry. Tourism continues to expand, experiencing consistent year-on-year growth.

This pathway includes two sustainable tourism specialist modules and your project will also be in this field. There will be no reference to sustainable tourism on your degree certificate, however your transcript will show all the modules you took and the grades you received.

The course consists of three distinct but interconnected stages:

• Certificate - The modern enterprise and business environment – how does it work? The Certificate phase will develop a resource based view of the business enterprise and examine how value is created, including the impact of the wider business environment on the enterprise’s value creation activities.
• Diploma - Preparing for tomorrow – what needs to change? In the Diploma stage the focus shifts to considering the manager’s role in the development of an enterprise in response to the internal and external context, to create sustainable value.
• Masters – Management in action – bringing about change. The Masters phase of the programme will focus more specifically on particular sectors and /or roles (including general management and leadership) depending on your chosen pathway. The emphasis will be on exploring, critically evaluating and applying a range of sector/ role specific models and concepts within a practice setting/ context.

Course information

This MBA aims to equip you with the necessary skills and provide a critical understanding of how to apply different approaches to sustainable tourism management. The long-standing critique of the tourism industry provides the context to critically evaluate sustainable development principles, and analyse economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts.

You will develop and apply both traditional and contemporary planning approaches. You will have the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills in the areas of Indicator Development Framework, monitoring and forecasting demand, and increasing tourist satisfaction. The course will embrace contemporary debates and challenges, and facilitate implementation in destinations and the industry.

The course seeks to develop participants to become effective and reflective managers and organisational leaders who have an in-depth understanding of not only how a modern tourism enterprise creates value, but how that value can be sustained into the future. The masters stage of the course requires you to take these principles into specific tourism contexts to initiate sustainable change.

Career prospects

The wide-ranging content of this MBA offers considerable flexibility, whether you decide to specialise in one of the management disciplines or take an overview of them all.

One of the course learning outcomes relates to professional and personal development. This is central to the course design and is reflected in module content and assessment. You will be expected to maintain a reflective professional development log and will be encouraged to actively use these as a basis for your career development. The course aims to develop reflective practitioners,this is particularly beneficial to careers in sustainable tourism.

An honours degree in any discipline, obtained from a recognised university/HE institution, or an equivalent qualification in a business related area. Applicants will also need to have a minimum of two years post-degree full-time work experience in a management/administrative/ professional capacity.