International Hospitality and Tourism Management MSc
2 Years full-time (with Advanced Practice) | September Start
Option for Placement Year
Option for Study Abroad
Option for Placement Year
Option for Study Abroad
Applicants should normally have:
A minimum of a 2:2 honours degree in any subject, or substantial experience of working in a business organisation.
International qualifications:
If you have studied a non UK qualification, you can see how your qualifications compare to the standard entry criteria, by selecting the country that you received the qualification in, from our country pages. Visit www.northumbria.ac.uk/yourcountry
English language requirements:
International applicants are required to have a minimum overall IELTS (Academic) score of 6.5 with 5.5 in each component (or approved equivalent*).
*The university accepts a large number of UK and International Qualifications in place of IELTS. You can find details of acceptable tests and the required grades you will need in our English Language section. Visit www.northumbria.ac.uk/englishqualifications
Full UK Fee: £15,350
Full International Fee: £23,950
Scholarships and Discounts
ADDITIONAL COSTS
There are no Additional Costs
* At Northumbria we are strongly committed to protecting the privacy of personal data. To view the University’s Privacy Notice please click here
Module information is indicative and is reviewed annually therefore may be subject to change. Applicants will be informed if there are any changes.
BM9718 -
Research Methods and Analytics for Business Practice (Core,20 Credits)
In this module you will learn about a comprehensive range of research methods and business analytics techniques. This will equip you with the knowledge and practical skills necessary for you to conduct research at Masters’ level and prepare you to complete a Master’s Dissertation, Consultancy Project or Management Enquiry. By the end of the module you will know how to apply both quantitative and qualitative data collection and business analysis techniques. In quantitative techniques you will learn about sampling, questionnaire design, statistical inference, and hypothesis testing while qualitative techniques covered will include methods such as interviewing and focus groups. Analysis methods such as content analysis and thematic analysis will also be covered. In addition, you will gain some understanding of research philosophy (positivism and interpretivism) and research ethics and you will be able to write a research proposal to bring these ideas together.
Furthermore, this module will provide clear, critical, and analysis of data, you will also be able to consider the use of analytics implementation skills, where you will be introduced to analytics software such as SPSS. SPSS statistics analysis is one of the powerful solutions that is designed to help businesses and researchers to solve problems by various methods (geospatial analysis, predictive analytics and hypothesis testing).
GA7000 -
Academic Language Skills for Postgraduate Business Students (Core – for International and EU students only,0 Credits)
Studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This
module is designed to support your transition to postgraduate level study in the use and practice of subject specific skills around assessments
and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to further develop your abilities to read and study effectively
for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your
use and application of language and communications skills suitable for a postgraduate level of study.
The topics you will cover on the module include:
• Understanding postgraduate assignment briefs.
• Developing advanced academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising advanced ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring postgraduate level academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Speaking in postgraduate seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related postgraduate level academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Postgraduate level speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.
SM4004 -
Entrepreneurship - Context, Process and Practice (Optional,20 Credits)
This module aims to increase your awareness and understanding of the issues and challenges of starting up and operating a small business and being entrepreneurial. As entrepreneurship requires a strong focus on practice, this will be achieved by providing you with a practical insight into setting up and trading as a small business, raising awareness of self-employment as a viable career option. You will learn about entrepreneurship as a process, the entrepreneurial person, ideation, and opportunity recognition, pitching and presenting, business planning, idea validation, resource acquisition, market analysis, customers and selling, entrepreneurial marketing, networking, and accelerators, incubation, and support. You will learn how to identify, explore, and progress your own business idea and be supported in your experience of planning this idea over the course of the module, recognising patterns and opportunities in complex situations and environments. At the end of this module, you will have a deeper understanding of real-life entrepreneurial issues and how they can be addressed. The development of entrepreneurial awareness, capability and mind-set which the module seeks to promote lends itself to application not only in new venture creation or development but also within traditional employment contexts.
More informationSM9731 -
Placemaking and Cultural Consumption (Optional,20 Credits)
In this module, you will study the concept of place, culture and creativity in cities worldwide.
Our contention is that people make places, and to an extent, places make people. In the module, students explore how spaces become meaningful places for leisure and consumption around the world as a result of what people (tourists, entrepreneurs, residents, policymakers, captains of industry) do. Students will be introduced to concepts on place-making, including the creation of contemporary bohemia / neo-bohemian cultural quarters aimed at the and day to night-time economy alongside creative and heritage industries, and cultural performances. Some of the themes to be studied include the significance of placemaking as cultural production and consumption, from the glossy, large-scale mega-development of event spaces, concert halls and sports grounds to more grass-roots community engaged bohemian entrepreneurs and sole operators.
TM9700 -
Hospitality, Tourism and Globalisation (Core,20 Credits)
This module aims to increase your awareness and understanding of the issues and challenges of hospitality and tourism in a global context – that is in relation to flows of capital and people around the world. You will learn about globalisation as an economic, social and cultural process and how hospitality and tourism, in all their different elements and incarnations, are part of that process. Through this you will be able to explore these industries thoroughly with a view of beginning to think how you may want to develop a career within them, and where. At the end of this module, you will have a deeper understanding of real-life issues around globalisation – from economic, social and cultural, and to an extent environmental - and how the tourism and hospitality industries are both shaped and shape them. The development of this awareness can not only encourage you to think about future careers in these exciting industries but potential business opportunities too.
More informationTM9701 -
International Hospitality Management (Core,20 Credits)
Hospitality is the management, sale and consumption of services including food, accommodation, experiences. It is arguably the oldest industry in the world and continues to be one of the fastest growing. This module is designed to enable students to learn about a range of theoretical and practical approaches applied in the study of the origins, scope and management of hospitality in tourism around the world.
The course examines the wide range of hospitality types in the tourism industry, from homes shared via digital platforms such as AirBnB, to traditional resort hotels, packaged tours, adventurous expeditions, temporary hospitality at festivals and in restaurants. We will consider the phenomenon from a mixed, multi-disciplinary perspective.
From the earliest host-guest relationships to the multi-billion-dollar global industry it is today, we will consider the glittering towers of Las Vegas and Dubai as well as the street food sellers of any city around the world, and the mountain peoples who offer simple hospitality from meagre resources. Throughout we will explore the growing significance of digital interfaces in the mega-processes and changes at work in some parts of this vibrant, ever-changing industry.
Crucially, the core of the programme will provide a framework for analysis, marketing and management of this diverse industry – for both the sole trader, micro-business or SME to those with roles in large national and multinational hospitality-driven businesses. Based as it is on the endless possibilities of human communication, service and co-creation, we will demonstrate that this is at once one of the most challenging and also potentially the most vibrant and rewarding of industries.
Key themes:
Traditional hospitality, talent management and employability experience economy, co-creation, , services and experiential marketing, gastronomy,
digital data and interfaces, the sharing economy, social media, sustainability and new product development
TM9702 -
Responsible Marketing Strategies in Tourism, Hospitality and Events (Core,20 Credits)
This is a 20-credit module running in the second semester of the programme and is developed for those of you who have prior awareness of some marketing within Tourism, Hospitality and Events management that seek a deeper understanding of contemporary issues of Marketing in SME’s.
More informationTM9703 -
Sustainable tourism and hospitality (Core,20 Credits)
This is a 20-credit module running in the second semester of the programme. The module will cover three main areas of learning: Environmental impacts of tourism and climate change, Sustainable principles and practice and green forms of consumerism in tourism and hospitality.
The first part will review the range of social and environmental impacts in tourism and hospitality sector both at a local and a global level. This first part will extensively cover debates surrounding climate change. You will learn how tourism contributes and is affected by climate change as well as the implications for the future of the sector.
The second part will start with a more theoretical discussion on sustainable tourism development as a contested concept and the various principles underpinning the debate.. It will consider the notion of sustainability in both local and global contexts as well as its application to the hospitality industry. You will learn about Environmental Management Systems in tourism and hospitality, Community involvement in the development of sustainable tourism, sustainable transport and hospitality and Food and beverage waste management systems.
The third part will explore various forms of green consumerism in tourism and hospitality that respond to these environmental challenges. The discussion will range from changing lifestyles and the 'new tourist to Ecotourism, Eco-ethics and other alternative forms of tourism such as slow food movement. It will also discuss how to inflict sustainability in mainstream tourism and hospitality practices. You will also learn about the convergence of mass tourism and sustainability, the marketing for sustainability and sustainability practices within the hospitality industry.
NX0470 -
Applied Management Work Investigation (Optional,60 Credits)
You will undertake a group consultancy project within the Business Clinic during the first semester of your second year of Masters’ study (NX0479). Through your work-based experience, you will develop ability as a problem solver with valued investigative, theoretical and practical business skills. This will last the length of the semester and involve the examination of a complex organisational problem or commercial opportunity. This second semester module will involve the development of the client oriented management report and presentation alongside an individual literature review and personal reflection.
The content of the management report will be unique. The nature and scope of the area of your investigation will be defined and agreed in collaboration with the organisation and the University supervisor. The syllabus will include:
• Conducting research in organisations.
• Identifying researchable questions.
• Consultancy and project management skills.
• Research methods and doing a literature review
• Presentation, communication and report writing skills.
• Analysing findings.
• Writing recommendations and action plans.
• Reflecting on work based experiential learning.
In undertaking this project based module, you will critically reflect and evaluate upon organisational practices and their relation with academic theory, and in doing so, provide practical and actionable recommendations through an investigative management report.
The assessment for your module consists of a Group Consultancy Report (7,000 words) and Final Client Presentation, weighted at 60%, alongside an Individual Assignment comprising a Literature Review (4000 words) and a Reflective Learning Statement (2,000 words), weighted at 40%.
NX0479 -
Business Clinic PG Group Consultancy Project (Core,60 Credits)
As a student enrolled on one of the 2-year Advanced Practice Programmes you may undertake a group consultancy project within the first semester of your second years of Masters’ study. Through your work-based experience, you will develop abilities as a problem solver with valued investigative, theoretical and practical business skills. This work-based experience will last the length of the semester and involve the examination of a complex organisational problem or commercial opportunity. By undertaking this module, you will have enhanced your individual skills, knowledge, effectiveness and employability by locating learning and development within a work-based context and will have critically reflected and evaluated upon organisational practices and the relation with academic theory.
The content of the work-based experience will be unique to you as a group of participants. The nature and scope of the area of student investigation will be defined and agreed in collaboration with the organisation and the University supervisor. The syllabus will include:
• Conducting research in organisations.
• Identifying researchable questions.
• Consultancy and project management skills.
• Research methods and doing a literature review
• Presentation, communication and report writing skills.
• Analysing findings.
• Writing recommendations and action plans.
• Reflecting on work based experiential learning.
Assessment will be both formative and summative and incorporate self, peer, and tutor evaluation. You will present your work-based findings to academic mentors (oral presentation) and an interim report written on behalf of the host organisation or sponsoring project client. In the follow-up module (NX0470), you will provide a substantial management investigation report on the business related issue emerging from this consultancy, alongside a personal reflective statement.
*Those students who do not achieve a mark 80% or more will not progress to NX0470 but will progress to the Masters Dissertation or Management Enquiry Module.
NX0480 -
The Newcastle Business School Masters Dissertation (Optional,60 Credits)
In this module you will gain an understanding of the academic skills that are required to produce a Masters Dissertation. By the end of the module you will have written a 15000 word Masters dissertation. The areas included are:
• Justification for the choice of topic
• Appropriate understanding, awareness and critical analysis of existing and up to date literature evidenced by a comprehensive and well-referenced literature review with an extensive reference list
• Selection, justification and application of an appropriately rigorous methodology - including limitations of the approach selected
• Clear statement of the findings of the research
• Critical analysis of the findings
• Explicit links between the analysis and the conclusions supported by critical argument
• Evidence of original work or thought for example in the form or context of the data collected, analytical process or application of findings
NX9734 -
Masters' Management Enquiry (Optional,60 Credits)
The Masters’ 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 and is offered as an alternative to the Masters’ Dissertation and Masters’ Consultancy Project.
The module aims to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate an authentic engagement with managers and/or professionals in your
discipline (this enquiry has to be discipline specific), 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
which is a single 15,000 word report.
Part A (35%, 5,000-5,500 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 non-verbatim documented conversation and provide evidence of the key ideas emerging within the submitted
enquiry report (e.g. within the appendices).
Review: Critically examining the academic and practitioner 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%, 9,500-10,000 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.
TM9706 -
Enterprise Project - business start-up (Optional,60 Credits)
This module is an optional capstone module for students on the MSc International Hospitality and Tourism Management programme who are considering starting up a business in this sector after graduation The focus of this module is to support you in developing your business idea into a real-life venture. To do this we will introduce you to venture creation topics with a focus on sales and marketing through weekly lectures. You will then apply these topics in creating a business plan for your own venture.
As well as learning how to develop your own venture you will explore what it is to become an entrepreneur. To support you in becoming an entrepreneur will also cover topics which will support the development of your entrepreneurial capabilities.
Central to the module is the development of a business plan for a new enterprise in hospitality or tourism focused on the ‘Business Model Canvas’ which is template or a simple representation of the core business model including key partners, value propositions, customers, costs and revenues. The workshops will introduce the idea of the business model canvas and guide you in developing the constituent elements. For example to develop the customer elements you will be introduced to customer profiling and segmentation, customer relationship development and the use of different channels to reach customers. Revenue streams will be explored by looking at what customers are willing to pay and the sales processes needed. The analysis of costs will be supported with some basic accounting.
Underpinning the business model is the value proposition and you will be challenged to identify the value you are delivering to the customer, how you propose to address their needs and the budling of products and services in the business model. The workshops introduce the topics and then by working in action learning sets you will challenge the approaches of your peers, but also you will be exposed to case studies from existing entrepreneurs.
Example topics which may be covered are:
Venture development topics
Lean start-up
Business model canvas
Developing your product/service portfolio
UK Company law and business structures
Developing business strategies
Customer profiling and market segmentation
Marketing for venture creation
Digital marketing
Sales processes for venture creation
Entrepreneurial capabilities topics
Goal setting and growth
Developing critical reflection techniques
Developing a growth mindset
Experiential and self-directed learning
Principles of coaching
The following alternative study options are available for this course:
Sep start
Sep start
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