Tourism and Events Management BA (Hons)

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

Part A (35%, 3,500 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 appropriate interview methods and provide evidence of the interview within the submitted enquiry report (e.g. within the appendices).
• Review: Critically examining the appropriate 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%, 6,500 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.

The dissertation module aims to equip you with the necessary intellectual and practical skills for undertaking an individual student-led, ethical investigation into an applied business (or the named degree) problem or issue. In addition, the dissertation aims to equip you with key transferable, employability skills, including: time management, project management, communication (written and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and influence, discovery, initiative, creativity and innovation in problem-solving, analysis.

The module is student-led but you are supported by, initially, weekly lectures and seminar-workshops which provide an introduction to undertaking Business-Management research followed by one-to-one or small-group supervision meetings.
The lectures and seminar-workshops will cover the following topics:
1. Developing a research aim/question (focusing and scoping the research)
2. Developing a literature review
3. Writing a research proposal
4. Researching ethically
5. Quantitative research techniques
6. Qualitative research techniques
7. Quantitative analysis techniques
8. Qualitative analysis techniques

Upon completion of the module you will be able to:
1. Conduct independent and ethical academic research involving the application and critical evaluation of appropriate theories and models,
2. Engage critically with relevant literature to establish a framework in which to analyse and synthesise the results of your primary or secondary research
3. Generate / collect relevant primary or secondary data using an appropriate and justified method
4. Analyse your data using an appropriate and justified method of analysis
5. Recognise the ethical implications of your work
6. Critically evaluate the source of your data and the method you adopted

The module aims to provide you with an opportunity to integrate the knowledge acquired during the programme and apply this to a consultancy project for a real organisation. This consultancy project provides a vehicle for participants to develop and demonstrate key employability skills, to relate theory to practice, and to undertake a significant piece of assessed work commensurate with a capstone module.

You will work on behalf of an external organisation, which has identified a business problem or question, requiring a solution, working in small group of typically 4 individuals (you will select their own team members), participating in group and individual activities. The host organisation will provide a project briefing, and review; students will be supported by appropriate academic input and guidance from Newcastle Business School in the form of a mentor and via the Business Clinic.

In an increasingly globalised world our cultural practices are changing and our ability to travel and visit cities, internationally, is increasing too. This also means that cities at a global level are competing for tourists as well as other visitors, ranging from producers and consumers of culture in myriad form.

In this module you will examine the concept of culture and its relationship with tourism, exploring the complexity of cultural tourism and its increasing globalisation in existing and emergent world destinations. Emphasis will be placed upon cultural tourism, events and festivalisation in urban contexts. Topics include, understanding cultural tourism and events, globalisation and trends in cultural tourism and events; cultural tourism in urban contexts; tourism and urban renaissance, cultural events and festivalisation, managing cultural cities, citizenship in cultural cities, heritage tourism; and tourism the media and popular culture.

Drawing on a wide range of theoretical and conceptual perspectives, you will develop an understanding of the way cities and urban spaces are becoming places of consumption and spectacularised through tourism, festivalisation and the staging of events. You will also have the opportunity to understand what it means to live in, and be a citizen of, the eventful city.

With this module you will develop interpersonal communication skills both in written and in oral form. You will learn to develop a sustained reasoned argument where you research and assess paradigms, theories, concepts and factual information, and apply such skills in the production of a written course-work assignment.

We will take the opportunity to consider Newcastle upon Tyne and other North East cities to illustrate the issues the module raises first-hand.

In this module you will gain a comprehensive understanding of the nature and practice of entrepreneurship and innovation within tourism, hospitality and events. The module will introduce students to the fundamental strategic management principles in tourism, hospitality and events management through a range of industry-based case examples. The module will also reflect on practice and developments in small and medium enterprises, making comparison with operations and practice in larger organisations from a strategic perspective and exploring the entrepreneurial aspects of both. Key themes which you will explore:
The theories and models that guide the development of business strategy for tourism, hospitality and events sector,
The role and nature of individual and collective entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship,
The creative use of entrepreneurship and social innovation,
The role of tourism in responding to developmental opportunities created by societal change and economic necessity,
Sectoral strategies and policy issues within public sector entrepreneurship and place/ regional development.

You will explore the development and operation of the following tourism, hospitality & event products; rural tourism, nature-based tourism, volunteer tourism, event sustainability, creative and heritage attractions, innovation in restaurants and hospitality, and place/regional development. You will evaluate these from a strategic, management, sustainable practice perspective and will draw on the concepts of entrepreneurial activity. This will give you skills and knowledge necessary to develop a career in tourism, events and hospitality and also skills which are transferable to other industries.

Your learning will be supported by a wide range of learning material drawn from academic literature, policy and practice sources and regional, national and international case studies.

Business tourism and events is a key segment of an ever-evolving industry, and through strategic planning, organisation and management, the segment continues to be an important focus in destination planning. In this module you will develop both a critical and practical understanding of this growing sector of tourism and events management.

The module is based on three key areas of business tourism and events: structure, management and environment.

First, you will learn about the range and reach of business tourism, focussing primarily on the structure of the MICE industry (meetings, incentive travel, conferences/conventions and exhibitions). You will examine the nature and scope of the MICE industry from a national and international perspective. You will also learn how to develop management strategies for the effective planning and management of MICE events.
Second, you will develop specialist knowledge of the latest management strategies, including planning, implementation, operation and control of business tourism and events.
Thirdly, you will explore the dynamic environment of business tourism and events by understanding the latest issues and future impacts within the business tourism segment.

The learning in this module seeks to equip you with the skills of intellectual autonomy and collaborative working through critical and strategic inquiry. By examining real life situations through debate, discussion and active engagement, you will identify and explain key operational quality issues as well present and potential impacts.

This module explores the uncertain futures of tourism by encouraging in-depth discussion and critique of key tourist questions and challenges facing communities, industry and governments. Tourism can only exist in the long term if it is managed responsibly. And yet the industry faces short demands for profits in a dynamic and challenging environment, which creates negative impacts that compromises its very own future. The module seeks to develop both theoretical and practical knowledge on how best to develop tourism potential without endangering the surrounding infrastructure and environment.

The module will cover four distinctive areas of study.

Firstly, sustainable tourism as the objective of both tourism industry and destinations. You will gain a critical appreciation of theoretical approaches to sustainability and will critically discuss the implementation of sustainable tourism policies and practices.

Secondly, the impacts of climate change and other risk factors in tourism. Climate change is arguably the single most important global environmental issue facing the tourism sector. Tourism both contributes to, and will be notably affected by, climate change.

Thirdly, transport, human mobility and globalisation. These issues are considered in terms of social, physical, virtual, cultural and historical aspects of the movement of people, artefacts, goods and ideas. Increased restrictions to global mobility will be also considered.

Finally, the challenges of an ageing population for tourism. Some of the many emerging consequences of economically successful societies and its changing demographics will be unpacked as new strategies are needed for dealing with the modern propensity to travel.