Certificate in Tourism and Hospitality Business Management

This subject is designed as an introductory, generalist subject to provide students with a broad understanding of tourism and hospitality industry, sectors, businesses and their roles and impacts in the wider economic and social environment. It is designed to set the basis for the other more specific courses of the certificate program. Therefore, it involves coverage of a wide range of subjects relevant to tourism and hospitality businesses at the local, national or global levels. Initially, students will learn the tourism system and its sectors as well as diverse stakeholders with different perspectives in evaluating the economic and social contribution of the industry. They will learn different types of tourism and hospitality products, challenges that tourism and hospitality businesses face, strategies used to overcome these challenges and current trends that the industry benefits or suffers from. They will learn different paradigms of tourism that govern the marketing mix offered by different businesses serving the needs of both domestic and international tourists. They will also learn branding and image development, from micro to macro level products in tourism and hospitality industry, with a strategic approach taking all stakeholders into account. They will learn research methods and techniques that are used in tourism and hospitality business management. Eventually, they will apply their knowledge through a group project that they will deliver as a presentation to the class to sharpen their technical, communication and presentation skills as well.

The hospitality industry is comprised of business firms, that in order to be successful, must properly manage the perishable nature of core products that are: service based commodities, labor intensive, face fierce competition levels, and exist within ever changing market place conditions. The business landscape in the hospitality industry changes dramatically as consumer tastes and preferences evolve and micro trends reflect volatile macro conditions. This course assesses the nature of hospitality products and addresses the unique challenges hospitality professionals face in managing their firms. The course combines the resource-based view and the stakeholder view with traditional theory and models providing a comprehensive and managerially useful perspective of strategic management. The focus of the course involves the translation of those strategic managerial ideas into the context of hospitality business management thereby providing a better fit to a service based industry as opposed to ideas found in general strategy literature. Instruction of the course will use a diverse set of examples and case studies that link strategies and pertinent issues to actions and activities of hospitality firms.

This course will provide an overview of marketing concepts and theories and how they apply in the tourism and hospitality industry. The students will examine the importance of marketing strategy within the strategic planning process of tourism and hospitality businesses. Case studies, group discussions and presentations will be used to exhibit learning of concepts such as: the product/services marketing mix, marketing environments, product differentiation, how to create loyal consumers, relationship marketing, segmentation, target marketing, positioning, branding and how to develop a marketing plan for a tourism or a hospitality business. Lectures will provide the foundation toward successfully completing a real life project (i.e., service learning).

Hospitality managers are responsible for making strategic and proactive decisions regarding how to maximize firm revenues that are dependent upon the sale of a relatively fixed product supply and varying consumer demand. Managers must dedicate critical attention to core product revenue maximization in the hospitality industry due to the time-sensitive, or perishable nature of a service based product. Such financial assessment is captured within the firm's revenue management system, where the goal is to generate maximum revenue. This course is designed to provide the students with an applied understanding of the strategies and tactics used in hospitality revenue management. The fundamental principles and concepts of revenue management that include capacity management, duration control, demand and revenue forecasting, discounting, overbooking practices, displacement analysis, rate management and sales mix analysis will be discussed throughout the term. The course will also examine best pricing strategies that increase revenue during seasonal low periods and maximize revenues during high demand seasons.

If MAIB students wish for this project to count toward the Certificate, a multinational hospitality corporation must be chosen as the project topic. Extensive research will be completed on the company over the year that you are in MAIB. The final product, submitted in your graduating term, is a case study on the company's global operations. You can choose from hotels, spas, airlines, restaurant and beverage companies, theme parks, and cruise lines.