BSC (HONS) INTERNATIONAL TOURISM, HOSPITALITY AND EVENTS (KAPLAN, SINGAPORE)

This module has twin aims, firstly supporting your transition into UK higher education by developing your academic skills in the context of your business, management and finance studies. The second aim is to equip you with the necessary knowledge and transferable skills to maximise your future employability and career development. As a student on level 6 top up programme you may have limited experience of higher education in the UK, hence this module begins by supporting you as a final year undergraduate student to understand, enhance and demonstrate advanced academic skills. The first part of the module will therefore help you strengthen and enhance your academic writing skills, progress your critical thinking ability and enable you to understand research and how to use academic journal articles. The second part of the module will focus upon your employability and leadership attributes, exploring key aspects of your knowledge, skills, personality, values and abilities to enable you to make well-informed career choices.

The topics covered on this module will include:
• Academic writing skills;
• Understanding learning styles;
• Working in teams;
• Enhancing critical thinking and writing skills;
• Understanding research and the effective use of journal articles;
• Developing a literature review;
• Understanding Employability and leadership attributes;
• Evaluate the global graduate labour market;
• Design career personal development plan.

This module aims to develop and empower you as a student to become a critical and reflective thinker with respect to both your academic development and to your future career planning.

In this module you will learn about the context of responsible strategic thinking, how to identify and explore sustainable business opportunities as a source of competitive advantage. You will gain an appreciation of the overarching principles of setting and executing a responsible and sustainable organisational strategy. Within the setting of these strategic objectives, you will understand how the associated responsible decision making will impact on both internal and external stakeholders. Your learning will span across private and public sector organisations, MNEs and SMEs and how each of different organisations and industries interact with the responsible and sustainable business opportunities and challenges.

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.

The module aims to provide you with an overview of the international hospitality industry and its management and strategic and operational practices which accompany it. The module provides knowledge of both historical and current factors which have shaped the industry and provides you with the skills to evaluate changes taking place in key markets and be able to consider the implications of these for hospitality providers.

You will learn about the following topics:
• The hotel sector – diversity, product appraisal
• An evaluation of global hospitality demand and the industry’s response to changes in consumer demand
• Hospitality marketing and brand management
• Hospitality operations, theory and practice in departments and functions
• International hospitality growth strategies
• Hospitality customer service management, loyalty and quality.
• The experience economy, servicescape and co-construction of experience, experiencescape and eventscape
• International hospitality human resource management
• Sustainability

Innovation is a key concept in business and entrepreneurial studies, and for managers within the tourism, hospitality and events industry, it is important to understand the relationship between tourism and innovation within the context of global economic, social, environmental and consumer challenges.

In this module you will gain a comprehensive understanding of the nature and practice of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship within tourism, hospitality and events (THE). You will understand the relationship between tourism and innovation and be provided with an overview of relevant innovation theories and related literature so you can understand the significance of innovation to the contemporary global tourism, hospitality and events industry. You will learn about consumer behaviour in THE consumption, the importance of experience economy and co-creation of the tourist experience and explore changing contexts in relation to the contemporary consumer; leading to more specialised, sophisticated, technologically enabled products.

You will progress, exploring the means by which categories of THE innovation are being developed; product, service, technical, process innovation, managerial/management, marketing, and institutional innovation. You will examine the benefits of innovation and creative product development for organisations within the THE and evaluate the role of the entrepreneur within this process.

The module will also reflect on practice and developments in small and medium enterprises, making comparison with operations and practice in larger organisations from an innovative and creative perspective, exploring the entrepreneurial aspects of both. Key themes which you will explore:
The theories and models that guide the development of business, product and service innovation for tourism, hospitality and events sector,
The role and nature of competition, knowledge exchange and creativity,
The creative use of entrepreneurship, social innovation and sustainable practice,
The role of tourism in responding to developmental opportunities created by technology, societal change and economic necessity,

You will explore the development and operation of the following tourism, hospitality & event products;
• place/ regional development and destination marketing,
• rural/ green & food tourism,
• event and festival sustainability,
• creative and heritage attractions,
• servicescape/ eventscape and theming,
• technology innovation in restaurants and hospitality, and
• new & enhanced product offerings within accommodation sector such as integrated resorts & casino operations, luxury hotels, eco accommodation & cruise ship operations.
You will evaluate these from a management, marketing, strategic and 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, regional, national and international case studies.

This module will draw on your student learning across your undergraduate programme of study, the module aims to provide you with the opportunity to engage in depth with contemporary research in your specialist named degree. You will learn about critical thinking and reflection, and doing so, you will develop the necessary critical skills to perform both of these effectively as a learner in higher education. You will develop an enquiring mind and undertake a critical review of existing literature on a contemporary issue within business and management disciplines, applying appropriate methods to collection and analysis of extant research, including reviewing literature and critical evaluation of business practice and academic theory.