MSc in Tourism Management

This course covers motivation, involvement, team work, leadership, emotional intelligence, cultural awareness and change management in Tourism Organizations. Each session integrates classical and modern concepts, building on key theories with a rich array of contemporary real-world examples and cases from the Tourism sector.

This introductory course outlines the main principles of writing and presenting academic and business assignments. A series of activities are used to develop, extend and enhance analytical and synthetical writing and presentation skills. The course explains the importance of knowing one’s audience, purpose and subject of written assignment or presentation. The sequence of stages and steps in the process of writing and presenting effectively is analysed. Preparing and delivering techniques are discussed.

This course analyses the nature, structure and scope of the tourism and hospitality industry, and discusses how broader business environment influences and trends affect the management of tourism and hospitality organisations in key sectors, such as accommodation, transportation, tour operating, visitor attractions, etc. Focusing on the particularities of tourism as a product and the distinctive characteristics of tourism demand and supply, the course introduces key considerations, challenges and current practices in decision-making in contemporary tourism and hospitality management. The course is complemented with a three-day visit to Costa Navarino, during which students have the opportunity to gain practical knowledge on several aspects of hospitality management.

This course focuses on the unique aspects involved in the design and delivery of service operations. In Tourism and Hospitality the objective is to introduce students to the basic issues and main challenges that most successful service operations face today.  Students completing this course will acquire the tools to identify and apply appropriate management processes to ensure efficient, effective and quality oriented service operations.

This course is designed to provide students with a good command of the key elements of marketing management across tourism organizations. During this course students will be encouraged to develop an analytical perspective and a critical understanding of the marketing concepts, models, and tools as they are applied across tourism organizations. Through case studies and contemporary examples from the tourism industry, the practical relevance of marketing theories for tourism managers will be highlighted and students will be expected to apply the theoretical concepts discussed onto real-life marketing examples from the tourism industry.

This course aims to enhance business problem modelling and solving skills by integrating concepts and frameworks from Statistics and Decision Science with modern Information Technology. Emphasis is placed on evaluating risks and using the theory of normative decision making to compare decision alternatives under uncertainty. Participants will learn how to structure complex management problems and combine quantitative analysis with judgment and critical thinking.  Topics covered include forecasting, decision analysis, Monte-Carlo simulation and business optimization. It is a practical course that uses case studies and spreadsheets to illustrate how to apply the methodologies introduced.

Hospitality and tourism is one of the industries that is most affected by digital development. Moreover, the travel industry stands as one of the first successful adopters of digital marketing. But as tech’s effect on travellers behavior continues to evolve, travel companies need to adopt and reshape the way they operate.
This course focuses on providing a general overview of the vast digital marketing ecosystems by presenting its main channels. The course analyses three channels (Channel #1 Website / Landing page architecture, Channel #2 Social media strategy, Channel #3 Social media campaigns) in more detail, in order to place students in a position to gain rich insights through case studies and real life scenarios.

For every channel, a practical workshop will be carried out, during which students will be asked to implement a specific deliverable, integrating information, concepts and models, discussed in class.

The objective of the course is to introduce students to a way of thinking and working on digital marketing projects as the constant change and development of the current and future platforms, solutions, applications requires this approach and handling.

This course facilitates the understanding and subsequent use of financial information for decision-making in the tourism sector. It addresses of two main perspectives, each one representing different stakeholders, who use financial information for decision making.   In particular, the first part of the course aims to provide the knowledge and skills required for the understanding and use of financial accounting information for decision-making. Some of the topics covered during the course include: the meaning and role of accounting, branches of  accounting,  and  users  of  accounting  information,  the  accounting  cycle,  and  the  financial statements, the effects of the use of different accounting methods, estimates and choices on the financial statements and the subsequent impact on decision making, ways of analyzing, interpreting  and  evaluating  financial  statements.

This course is an introduction to the theory, principles and practices of revenue management (RM) and how these can be particularly applied to the growing tourism industry. More specifically the course focuses on the application and evaluation of revenue management strategies and is intended for individuals with a specific interest in the tourism industry.

The course covers supply chain coordination, supplier selection, purchasing methodologies and contracting, material forecasting and safety stock, and design of services for supply chain efficiency. It also focuses on the best practices that lead to efficient, effective, and customer-responsive SCM processes that transform ideas into high quality services, delivered at competitive prices while simultaneously providing superior financial returns within environmental, ethical, and legal constraints.

The course provides an integrative framework for the whole program. It will explain basic planning principles of business strategy and the process through which strategic decisions are made in tourism organizations at both destination and organizational level. Students will become familiar with key strategy elements, such as how tourism organizations select the market, product, and areas in which they compete, how they position themselves in these areas, how they interact with their external environments, how they adjust to changes, and how they decide and implement structure and policies that enable them to achieve their overall goals. The role of the HR professionals in the process of corporate strategy formulation and implementation will also be outlined.

This course builds on the Introduction to Tourism Management course and delves more deeply into the positive and negative economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts that the tourism industry is responsible for. The course places particular emphasis on the inability to isolate the positive from the negative impacts of tourism, and therefore the necessity for identifying strategies for optimizing tourism’s impacts, i.e. maximizing the benefits while minimizing the costs. After defining key sustainability principles and potential challenges, as well as management tools and methods, the course will encourage students to reflect on the role, and responsibility, of various stakeholder groups in applying sustainability principles in practice in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Nowadays, many millennials dream of becoming entrepreneurs. They often have specific entrepreneurial role models and dream of becoming millionaires before age 35.

Entrepreneurship and innovation are important drivers for success in any service industry. The tourism industry, or rather the sectors that make up the tourism industry, require specific skills and approaches. This module deals with the key issues of entrepreneurship, product and service development, innovation and creativity in two specific sectors of the tourism industry: the hospitality and F&B sectors. It challenges students to think outside the box in terms of how to develop new business/product ideas in a service industry, difficult to virtualize in its entirety.

This course brings together the academic with the business world, providing a unique opportunity to students to advance their career and professional development in the tourism industry. It has the status of a course, hence it carries credits and it is graded. The benefits for students include the opportunity for: the blending of academic and on-the-job learning; the integration of academic knowledge with practical experience; the development of relevant skills and understanding of diverse operations; the identification and/or refinement of career goals; strengthening employability skills. Career development may take the form of an internship in a tourism organization for those students who are currently not working or the form of professional development for those students who work in a tourism organization.

Internship: The expected duration is three (3) months, between May and September.  The benefits for students include the opportunity for the blending of academic and on-the-job learning; the use of the explicit knowledge gained during the program, the attainment of tacit knowledge, the development and diversification of skills, the acquisition of work experience, the identification and/or refinement of career goals, the creation and/or development of a professional network.  The benefits for companies include the opportunity to meet some company needs with highly qualified and motivated students, the identification of talent for potential future employment, the enrichment of current perspectives and practices with the intern’s novel ideas, the enhancement of social responsibility activities.
Professional development: The opportunity is given to students to reflect on their work practices and experiences and apply the academic knowledge acquired through the program on a real tourism organization. A reflective report needs to be produced, which represents the culmination of the program’s intensive learning. Students are expected to test what they have learned in class in a real setting, identify areas for professional development, set career goals and generate a concrete action plan.  

The Dissertation is a research project of a student’s special interest in a faculty member’s area of expertise. The students will have the opportunity to construct a detailed plan of a research project; to review specific literature on the selected topic; to identify relevant research questions from the literature; to be able to turn general research questions into empirical ones; to select and justify an appropriate research design; to select and employ suitable methods or techniques to investigate the empirical questions; to analyze financial or social data and to write a report covering a review of the relevant literature, the research questions, an explanation and justification of the design, a description of the conduct and analysis of the research, and a discussion of the findings in relation to the literature and methodological issues.