MBA IN HOSPITALITY

COURSES OVERVIEW
The following outline is an overview of the courses offered in the MBA in Hospitality Management program.

Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness (3 credits)
Leadership, human resources management and organizational culture are now widely recognized as strategic tools that work together to assure sustainable organizational effectiveness. Furthermore, in the global economy of today, a sound understanding of cultural difference is an essential part of the international manager’s toolkit. In addition to bringing together core theory on leadership, culture, both societal and organizational, and HR management, this course uses state-of-the-art research and a wide range of real-life cases to provide participants with the analytical tools to develop their own leadership style, analyze cultural profiles in organizations and make strategic HR choices that ensure an optimal fit between leader vision and actual organizational functioning.

Business Modeling, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (3 Credits)
This course introduces a linear programming and Excel-based approach to applied business models and management science to seek innovation and set up entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial enterprises. Operations research will be provided to identify product mix, scheduling, simulation, decision making, transportation, assignments and queuing forecasting models necessary to optimize existing business processes. Using Customer Journey Maps, students will then assess configuration, offering and experience innovations in disruptive or evolutionary markets and will submit a business plan to launch their business or innovation in the market.

Strategic Marketing and Sales in the Hospitality Industry (3 Credits)
The course offers a thorough grounding in strategic marketing and sales. Since marketing is about identifying and meeting human and social needs in order to deliver unique value to the customer, the course begins with the examination of marketing as a strategic business function. Students then progress through an analysis of the business environment and how to determine products and services they might profitably offer their customers. The middle part of the course deals with the three key strategic concepts of segmentation, targeting and positioning. Next, students will explore the components of the marketing mix. The final sections will deal with branding and destination marketing. All these concepts will be illustrated throughout the course with examples and case studies.

Managing Destinations’ Competitiveness (3 Credits)
This course will discuss the issues of managing destinations. It will outline the issues of tourism management and planning as well as image, perception and event management. It will look at demand and supply structures and the impacts of tourism in an effort to discuss the different competitive tools available to tourism destinations areas. In short, the course will focus on the issues of planning and competitiveness both from the destination as well as from the tourism business perspective.

Strategy and the Value Adding Manager (3 Credits)
Driven by the globalization of trade, financial flows, transportation and the digitalization of exchanges, the international hospitality industry has evolved into complex systems linking activities such as distribution, branding, management, real estate ownership and financing. In such an environment, hospitality companies have espoused singular strategies that have shaped their boundaries and changed the sets of relationships governing the industry. This course provides an overview of the current strategic orientations of hospitality firms, and of the consequences of major trends on the past and future of the industry. Classic strategic theories and frameworks will be introduced and reviewed, and their application to the industry discussed. The idiosyncratic characteristics of the industry will be highlighted in this context.

Hospitality Financial Management and Budgeting (3 Credits)
This course helps students understand the fundamentals of business administration through budgeting. Students will learn how to involve key employees in the budget planning process, win support and defend budget proposals, and evaluate the financial status of an operating department. Using skills from this course and previous courses, students will demonstrate the process of budget planning and writing.
Hospitality Demand Management (3 Credits)
This course covers concepts, principles and implementation of revenue management in hospitality and tourism businesses. Revenue management is defined as the process of “... selling the right product to the right customer at the right price for the right time” (Kimes, 1998), and it is widely advocated as a strategic necessity for all service companies. Revenue management strategies require the simultaneous management of two major issues: demand (pricing) and capacity (service duration) management. This course develops students’ critical and analytical skills in terms of the management of these two dimensions through the analysis of case studies and industry examples.

Corporate Finance and Shareholder Value (3 Credits)
Corporate finance is the study of managerial decision making concerning investment, long-term financing, and interpretation and communication of information to assist managers in fulfilling their organizational objective. The course aims to develop in the student the ability to make long-term planning and financial decisions, carry out effective controlling and identify relevant information for decision making. Students are expected to be familiar with financial terminology and its real-world applications.

Customer Behavior and Insights (3 Credits)
Consumer Behavior and Insights investigates the manner in which people interact with products and their marketing environment. This can include the purchase of products (a new iPhone), the consumption of services (Disneyland), or the disposal of goods (eBay). Since we are all consumers in the marketplace in some form, consumer behavior can also tell us something about ourselves. As a result, consumer behavior is one of the most interesting topics in marketing. Understanding consumers enables marketers to more effectively meet the needs of buyers in the market and be more successful in the market. In this course we will study the basic factors influencing buyer behavior, the concepts used to explain this behavior, and the implications of these concepts for marketing issues. Topics include effects of motivation, learning, perceptions, attitude, personality, lifestyle, reference groups, social class, demographics, and cultural factors on buyer behavior, with emphasis upon mass communication effects.

Uncertainty, Data Analytics and Critical Thinking (3 Credits)
Good business decisions are based on information interpreted through valid and clean data. This course is designed to provide students with the necessary tools for collecting, analyzing, interpreting and presenting data needed for business decisions. A variety of statistical tools will be examined that can be used to assist managers in the decision making process.

Strategic Business Project (4 Credits)
This course allows students an opportunity to further develop the knowledge, skills and insights gained during the MBA studies, and apply these within a real-life setting. Students will work on an applied research project to investigate an area of interest in depth with a strategic focus and solve a particular organizational problem. The nature of the project will vary every semester and the subject matter will be related to the MBA program.