Certificate in Tourism and Hospitality Business Management

The Certificate in Tourism and Hospitality Business Management is jointly offered by the Hough Graduate School of Business and the Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute at the University of Florida (UF). The certificate is offered to current UF graduate degree-seeking students.

The tourism and hospitality industry is a fast-growing, dynamic, and global industry with a variety of career options for individuals to develop into upper-level managerial positions. The certificate coursework will allow students to gain a comprehensive managerial knowledge base of the processes and strategies used by leading firms to gain a competitive advantage in the tourism and hospitality industry. The content of the courses centrally focus on developing the students’ managerial skill set as opposed to “back of the house” hospitality operational skills.

To earn this certificate, students must take a total of 10 credits (5 courses) over the fall and spring terms:

  • 6 credits – Tourism & Hospitality Courses (3 courses)
  • 4 credits – Approved Business Certificate Electives (2 courses)

Courses and Instructions

Take three or four (if four are taken, it reduces the number of business electives you will take to one):

  • LEI 6931 Tourism & Hospitality Business Perspectives (Fall Module 1)
    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.
  • LEI 6931 Strategic Management in Hospitality Business (Fall Module 2)
    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.
  • HMG 6747 Marketing in Hospitality/Tourism (Spring Module 3)
    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).
  • HMG 6466 Revenue Management in Hospitality Business (Spring Module 4)
    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.

Choose one or two:

  • BUL 5811 Law, Ethics, and Organizations
  • BUL 6841 Employment Law
  • ENT 6930 Corporate Entrepreneurship
  • MAN 5246 Organizational Behavior
  • MAN 5502 Production & Operations Management
  • MAN 6331 Compensation in Organizations
  • MAN 6366 Organizational Staffing
  • MAN 6447 Art and Science of Negotiation
  • MAN 6635 International Aspects of Human Resource Management
  • MAN 6930 Conflict Management and Negotiation
  • MAN 6930 Cyber & AI Governance in Business
  • MAN 6930 Strategy/Disruption Technology
  • MAR 6456 Business-To-Business Marketing (prereq: MAR5806 or MAR4803)
  • MAR 6508 Customer Analysis (prereq: MAR5806 or MAR4803; and QMB6358; and ISM6413 or QMB3302)
  • MAR 6667 Marketing Analytics Methods (prereq: MAR5806 or MAR4803; and QMB6358)
  • MAR 6668 Marketing Analytics 1 (prereq. MAR5806 or MAR4803; and QMB6358; and ISM6413 or QMB3302)
  • MAR 6669 Marketing Analytics 2 (prereq. MAR5806 or MAR4803; and QMB6358; and ISM6413 or QMB3302)
  • MAR 6722 Web-Based Marketing (prereq: MAR5806 or MAR4803; and QMB6358)
  • MAR 6818 Advanced Marketing Management (prereq: MAR5806 or MAR4803)
  • MAR 6833 Product Development and Management (prereq: MAR5806 or MAR4803)
  • MAR 6861 Customer Relationship Management (prereq: MAR5806 or MAR4803; AND QMB6358)
  • REE 6045 Introduction to Real Estate
  • REE 6395 Investment Property Analysis (prereq: FIN5439 or REE6045)
  • REE 6105 Real Estate Appraisal (prereq: REE6045 or REE6395)
  • REE 6208 Secondary Mortgage Markets and Securitization (prereq: FIN5439, REE6045, or REE 6206)

For graduate business elective courses, follow the instructions on the Graduate Elective Courses page.

  1. Submit Certificate Application (this lets us know that you plan to pursue the certificate). Go to the UF Admissions website. Select option for “For currently enrolled UF students, apply here” option.
    • Intended Term:
    • Certificate Level: Graduate
    • College: Business (UNBUS)
    • Major: Business Administration Grad Cert (BUS_GCT)
    • Concentration: Tourism & Hospitality Bus Mgt (BUS_GCT05)
  2. Apply to Certify Your Certificate on ONE.UF in your graduating term. To receive the certificate, you must:
    1. Apply for the certificate in ONE.UF by the UF degree application deadline (in your graduating term).
      • Go to ONE.UF
      • On the left-hand menu, select My Record, then select Certificate/Degree Application
    2. Meet the Criteria for Completion of a Graduate Certificate
      • Consistent with longstanding Graduate Council policy, the only passing grades for students in a Graduate Certificate program are A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, and S.
      • All course work used for the Graduate Certificate must meet a minimum overall 3.0 GPA (truncated).
      • Credits earned at another institution may not be used to meet the requirements of a UF Graduate Certificate.
      • Coursework and credits used for a UF Graduate Certificate may also be used to fulfill some requirements for a UF graduate degree, subject to existing Graduate School policy and with the approval of the academic unit offering the graduate degree program. In general, this criterion would be met by the prior inclusion of the graduate certificate coursework in the approved plan of study for the graduate degree.
      • Graduate Certificates may include courses that are a part of an academic program or courses created specifically for the Certificate.
      • Specified courses may be identified as required courses for more than one Graduate Certificate. In that circumstance the credit hours associated with such a course may contribute to only one of the Graduate Certificates. Additional graduate level coursework, approved by the academic unit, will have to be completed to meet the credit hour requirement of the second or subsequent certificate.
      • Coursework and credits used to satisfy the requirements for a Graduate Certificate may not be used to meet the requirements of a minor.
      • Students currently enrolled in a graduate degree program may not be admitted to a Graduate Certificate program that has the same name as the major, concentration or minor specified as part of their graduate degree program.

Note: LEI / HFT/ HGM courses will not count toward your major (business) GPA, but it will count toward your cumulative GPA.