COURSE OUTLINE
Ulster University final year of Bachelor Degree (Honours) programme is designed to develop and equip students with critical thinking, leadership and associated skills required in professional hospitality management practice. Workshops and guest lectures from industry leaders and/or visiting professors, problem-based learning scenarios and study visits will provide further enhancement to students’ learning experience.
Through all these modes of learning, students will be equipped with the knowledge and skills that are necessary for them to become leaders in the hospitality industry alongside with employment opportunities across a wide range of specialised sectors.
MODE OF DELIVERY
Delivery Method
The degree programme consists of a total of 6 modules and may be completed in 8 months. The mode of delivery is face-to-face with a total contact of 336 hours for all modules in the programme. The programme is scheduled weekly for 5 days and for a maximum of 4 hours per day.
ASSESMENT METHOD
Written Exams, Projects and Presentation.
STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
S.No. Module Description 1. Tourism Planning, Development and Management Planning, development and management are essential to tourism. The knowledge of key planning principles, approaches to development are of fundamental importance to managers within the tourism industry. Tourism management requires an understanding of how is planned and developed in order to ensure sustainability for the future. The module develops the specialist area of tourism planning, development and management, providing students with an appreciation of the difficulties associated with planning, developing and managing tourism at various scales (international through to communities), and for niche markets. The value that tourism is worth both in economic, social and environmental terms are addressed through the challenges of planning, developing and managing tourism in line with sustainability principles. Students are also encouraged to see how external factors and crises can affect how tourism is developed and managed within destination regions. 2. Contemporary Issues in Hospitality Management Successful hospitality managers must possess the ability to respond to change in the external operating environment. Having the ability to both identify trends and developments as well as provide an appropriate management response are important competencies for successful hospitality managers and this module seeks to develop the learner's ability to develop these skills. This module aims to identify, explore and analyse some of the key contemporary issues that are of particular relevance to the hospitality sector. The module delivery will focus on a selection of issues that are deemed to be the most significant for this sector at the time of teaching. 3. Event Management The events sector experienced exponential and uninterrupted growth in the last three decades and changes in the micro and macro environment means that event organisations are competing in a global market place. Consequently, there is a greater need for strategic event specialists to plan, implement and evaluate various types of event. Furthermore, event goers have increasingly sophisticated expectations and require a growing level of professionalism to deliver the critical success factors that make an event successful. The aim of this module is to introduce students to importance of events to an economy and prepare students for the realities of working in a sector that is becoming increasingly international. Students will also study the theory and learn experientially about the operational practice of event management. 4. Leadership and Professional Development Strong leadership and defining leadership success is not always about the financial results. It also needs to include the development of others - from developing yourself as a leader to getting the best from the team for increased productivity and business success. The module aims to provide students with an appreciation of effective leadership in gaining business success. The module will help the student to develop their ability to reflect on their professional self as an effective leader and to explore personal capabilities to build and lead a team for a successful business in the hospitality sector. 5. Strategic Management in the Hospitality Industry This module will equip hospitality and culinary arts management students with the perspectives necessary to carry out an effective strategic analysis of a hospitality organisation and to better understand the role and importance of strategy in enabling organisations to identify, evaluate and respond to the forces and influences that impact upon their ability to achieve and sustain long-term competitive advantage. The overall aim of the module is to provide knowledge and critical understanding of the process of strategy development and its application in a hospitality environment. This module aims to develop in students those transferable strategic perspectives and skills which are key to effective strategic management. 6. The Business Plan This module provides students with an opportunity to undertake a practical project in business planning and entrepreneurship, whether it is new venture creation, enterprise development, project management or community-based development project. Rapid changes in technology, political structure and lifestyles are creating new products and services, new markets and many more opportunities for enterprise development. These issues, when combined with the pressure of aggressive competition, create an environment full of challenge to those wishing to create or develop an enterprise. It is important that students have an opportunity to experience the challenges inherent in examining and seeking to provide solutions to a practical entrepreneurial problem. This module aims to give a learning environment that nurtures and brings out entrepreneurial attitudes in the students, allows them to build entrepreneurial competencies and provides them with an opportunity to explore entrepreneurship in practice. The module rings together the functional areas that students have studied and allows them to apply this knowledge to investigating market opportunities, trending products/services and to developing appropriate business plans
