UDTTRMFY - BA (Hons) Tourism and Travel Management (including foundation year)

This course provides students with an opportunity to develop both their academic and practical skills in preparation for further study and/or their chosen career. It is foundational in its approach to preparing students who may not have traditional qualifications for admission to a degree course at a university. There is a strong emphasis on developing students’ ability to learn in preparation for their future learning.

The foundation year, common to other Business and Management degree programmes, ‘extends’ the BA Tourism and Travel Management to provide the basics on which students can build to take their place on either the full BA Tourism and Travel Management programme or another degree course. It includes a strong focus on employability. Its overall aim is to provide students with the confidence and transferable knowledge and skills required for their chosen careers and future studies.

The BA Tourism and Travel Management was developed to answer the tourism and travel industry demand for specialist tourism and destination managers and planners. Despite the industry’s prime position as a global revenue and employment contributor, the world’s biggest service economy suffers from insufficient investment in its workforce, especially in relation to challenges of overtourism, global competition, and climate change. Through a challenge-focused curriculum, this course attempts to address existing gaps and provide graduates with an understanding and the tools to manage tourism’s greatest challenges. The tourism sector demands a wide and complex range of skills, encompassing planning and impact management. embedding sustainability, management of visitors, destinations, and attractions in line with responsible tourism principles.

The 21st-century tourism landscape is rapidly changing, with new technologies, climate change, and more complex motivations responsible for advancing new forms of tourism – from astrotourism and medical tourism to coolcations and bleisure. At the same time, established tourism destinations face growing challenges of overtourism, loss of authenticity, and a deprived destination image. Future tourism industry professionals need to understand the challenges ahead and be equipped with tools to manage them. In response, the course offers an intellectually stimulating and distinctive programme combining a range of tourism studies disciplines and approaches in one syllabus, incorporating sustainability, business management, cultural heritage and tourism-led regeneration, responsible destination management, niche tourism, marketing and entrepreneurship, to offer an all-embracing preparation to graduates.

The course utilises the advantages of its London location, with access to world-class attractions, professionals and business events, at the same time encouraging students to share, use and incorporate their own experiences from all over the world. The course engages students in contemporary challenges via practical projects, case-studies, and multiple opportunities to develop research and professional skills leading to the development of a life-long learning mindset. The course places as much emphasis on gaining skills relevant to the workplace as on learning the academic discipline, and embeds employability in every year of the student journey, starting from level 4 core modules via a range of short- and long work placements opportunities to professional environment simulation modules such as tourism destination management.

Staff regularly undertake professional development and are subject to periodic reviews of teaching quality and assessment strategies. Module architecture and assessment strategies are regularly reviewed for their robustness, ensuring the course fulfils the University’s overarching strategy of maintaining a supportive educational environment. Independent learning is encouraged through classroom debate, idea exploration, and discovery-based assessments

The course has been designed with reference to two Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education Subject Benchmarks: Business and Management (2023) and Events, Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism (2019).

The overall aim of the full BA Tourism and Travel Management (including foundation year) is to deliver a contemporary, rigorous, and dynamic programme of study that equips students with the knowledge, understanding, and skills inherent in the subject to prepare them for a career in business management by increasing their understanding of organisations, their management, the economy, and the business environment.

The broad aims of the BA Tourism and Travel Management (including foundation year) are to:
· Orientate students to study at university level and provide them with an opportunity to develop their academic and practical skills to progress into further study;
· Introduce students to the context of business management and the concepts of dealing with customers;
· Enable students to explore and examine key concepts, principles, and techniques that make businesses successful and efficient, and to link the multi-disciplinary subjects of business management coherently in the context of the business world;
· Develop students’ knowledge of the decision-making process, as well as the social, cultural, and ethical environment in which businesses operate. Students are provided with opportunities to engage with leading-edge themes of business management, including sustainability, leadership, globalisation, entrepreneurship, innovation, and corporate social responsibility;
· Develop students’ academic, intellectual, and practical skills and promote the development of their ability to critically analyse, synthesise, and evaluate business management principles in a wide range of appropriate contexts. A central feature of this course is the development of students’ lifelong learning skills, including self-evaluation and reflection, to place students in the best position to make informed decisions about their future professional career.

With regards to the core tourism and travel management outcomes, the course aligns with the QAA Benchmarks for Events, Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism (QAA, Nov 2019), which include:

· Increasing understanding of concepts and characteristics of tourism as an area of academic and applied study; products, structure of, and interactions in the tourism industry; and the relationships between tourism and the communities and environments in which it takes place
· Preparing students for a career in tourism planning, business, and destination management;
· Enhancing a wide range of skills that equip graduates to become effective global citizens.

Students will gain insight into the principles and techniques that drive success in tourism destinations and business, and they will engage in both real-life and simulated business experiences. The course encourages critical reflection on ethical, social, and cultural issues, fostering a respect for diversity and preparing students to thrive in global tourism organisations.

On completion of this course, students will be able to: demonstrate confidence, resilience, ambition, and creativity, and will act as inclusive, collaborative, and socially responsible professionals in their discipline (ULO)

Thus, upon graduating with an Honours degree in Tourism and Travel Management, students will typically:
LO1: Have the confidence needed to take leadership decisions in challenging situations
LO2: Possess the necessary communication skills that will help them adopt a global and multicultural perspective in their professional context
LO3: Be cognisant of the social and environmental effects of their decisions and will remain active citizens of the places they live and work,
LO4: Demonstrate application of creative thinking skills to practical problems, and possess the analytical and organizational skills to translate creative ideas to operational solutions in the tourism and travel industries,
LO5: Consistently demonstrate a command of subject-specific skills as well as proficiency in generic skills and attributes.
LO7: Have a perspective of management that is relevant to tourism, travel, and destinations, influenced by a wide range of learning sources, and based on a proactive and independent approach to learning,
LO8: Be distinguished from the basic standard (threshold) of achievement by their enhanced capacity to develop and apply their own perspectives to their studies, to deal with uncertainty and complexity, to explore alternative solutions, to demonstrate critical evaluation, and to integrate theory and practice in a wide range of situations.

QAA Events, Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Subject Benchmark Statement (Nov 2019)
https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/subject-benchmark-statements/subject-benchmark-statement-events-leisure-sport-tourism.pdf?sfvrsn=c339c881_11

The QAA Benchmark statement for Business and Management (Mar 2023)
https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/sbs/sbs-business-and-management-23.pdf?sfvrsn=8370a881_10

The assessment strategy is based on the model of progressive and inclusive curriculum, QAA Subject Benchmark Standards and Learning, Teaching and Assessment Framework, with study skills being introduced, then practiced and finally assessed in one or consecutive modules.

Assessment methods intend to be appropriate to the aims and level of the module and its desired learning outcomes. At level 4, assessments intend to focus on assessing student’s knowledge and comprehension, then assess application and analysis skills at level 5, to finally assess the ability to synthesise and evaluate information, and create new products at level 6. Additionally, assessments in level 4 tend to employ forms that students are likely to be familiar with from earlier stages of education (e.g. presentations and tests), while new forms of assessment, more advanced in digital literacy and linked to professional business environment (e.g. business pitch, report, audit, portfolio, consultancy, etc.) are introduced in levels 5 and 6. The variety of assessments allow for personalisation, with students being given a choice of the object of study.

Formative feedback and feed-forward is embedded in the course at all levels, where students can obtain advice on case study choices, and discuss early research findings. Modules use varied feedback mechanisms, including oral feedback in taught sessions, written feedback (e.g. comments on case study choices), feedback sessions (in-class and online via Blackboard Collaborate), written and audio feedback on the final work and sometimes visual feedback (e.g. mind maps of feedback on draft work, e.g. dissertation). The timeline of feedback provision is in line with university policies and standards, and marking schemes for levels 4, 5 and 6 respectively are employed in all modules.

All assessments (apart from artefacts and written exams) are submitted online via Weblearn/Turnitin to ensure timely submission and monitoring of engagement. Online submission enables anonymous marking and guarantees equal access for all module tutors and external markers to assignments

The Careers and Employability Team assists students in obtaining placements tailored to students’ needs and/or circumstances. Its service is targeted to support students before, during and after their placement. Placement preparation workshops or one-to-one interviews run during the year prior to the placement to provide advice and support on aspects such as CVs, job applications, interview technique and job search strategies. Individual support is provided during the placement, complementing the role of academic placement supervisors, and reflection and debriefing workshops are organised in the year following placement.

Currently it is possible to undertake work placements or internships that are worth 15 credits during or outside term-time. Two modules are offered: ‘Learning Through Work’, which focuses on the learning experience in an employee position for a minimum of 5 weeks (or the equivalent of this part-time); and ‘Creating a Winning Business’, which applies to a taught learning experience where students develop a business plan.

It is also possible to obtain work experience and credit by taking the module 'Professional Experience Year Placement' as a year-long 30 credit option module. This module, also known as an internship, normally takes place between levels 5 and 6. This arrangement will be subjected to approval. Students are required to seek further advice on funding implications as the year-long placement module will extend the course duration to four years. The Careers and Employability Team is responsible for assisting students in obtaining short placements

There are no specified part-time structures for this course. Students on a part-time mode of study are required to take between 30 and 90 credits per academic year to complete the degree programme within the maximum time length allowed (8 years for a four-year course). Programme planning is therefore agreed between the student and course team, in accordance with regulations on progression and completion.

Courses shall conform to both framework and University Academic Regulations.

CertHE Tourism and Travel Management: 120 credits at Level 4 (including foundation year)

DipHE Tourism and Travel Management: 240 credits at Level 5 (including foundation year)

BA (unclassified) Tourism and Travel Management: 300 credits at Level 6 (excluding

Project/Dissertation) but (including foundation year)

BA (Honours) Tourism and Travel Management: 480 credits at Level 6 (including Project/Dissertation) plus including foundation year

Developing reflective practice in students is built into the curriculum, and specific activities to support this are the introduction of Enhancement Weeks and Personal Development Planning (PDP), which are now an established part of the undergraduate programmes.

Enhancement Weeks are scheduled as part of teaching programmes where teaching on individual modules is suspended to enable students to engage in broader course-based activities. These include opportunities for reflective engagement with feedback, career preparation and employability development activities, conferences by and for students, and programme planning advice.

PDP is embedded in activities and assessments to encourage and emphasise reflection on learning goals and outcomes, to plan ways to address students’ learning development needs and to capture their learning achievements. PDP on the course involve a variety of processes and formats as appropriate to the discipline (e.g., learning journals, e-portfolios, annotated sketchbooks, case books, skills audits, reflective commentaries, graduation statements).

Generic and transferable skills are integrated into the context of the tourism and travel industry in a wide range of modules that are delivered centrally. Assessment is customised to focus on research and enterprise in sector-context, which enables the promotion of best practice, such as:

· Incorporation of a formative assessment task for modules at each level

· Publication and communication of assessment criteria from the outset of module delivery

· Provision of details on feedback, including timing and overall management at module and course levels

You'll benefit from links to employers in the tourism and travel sector through membership of the Tourism Management Institute.

To prepare students for a career in tourism and travel and enhance life-long learning skills, students will get the opportunity to engage with employers through a variety of mechanisms in core modules at levels 4, 5 and 6, including curricular and co-curricular activities taking place throughout the course.

During the course of level 4 students will have an opportunity to participate in a business trade fair event, which will feed into professional aspirations within the sector.

This course has helped many graduates to successfully secure positions in national destination management organisations and governmental bodies (e.g. Armenia, Sri Lanka, London), visitor attractions, tourism consultancy, travel trade and hospitality. Some graduates became entrepreneurs while many successfully apply for postgraduate courses in the UK, especially in heritage, sustainability, planning and digital marketing.

Our Tourism and Travel Management (including foundation year) BA (Hons) degree is a career-focused course designed to offer you the best possible prospects on graduation.

The course has previously propelled our graduates into a wide range of successful and rewarding careers. We’ve had graduates who have gone on to work in managerial roles with tour operators, in road, rail, sea and air transport and in research and consultancy.

In addition to the University's standard entry requirements, you should have:

• at least one A level (or a minimum of 32 UCAS points from an equivalent Level 3 qualification, eg BTEC Subsidiary/National/BTEC Extended Diploma)
• English Language GCSE at grade C/4 or above (or equivalent)