MA Tourism Management

Start date: September and January for the MA traditional route, May for the MA with integrated work placement.

Course length: Full time: one year, full time with integrated work placement: 20 months, part time: two years and up to up to six years.

Campus: Buxton Campus

This course is available to international students

Destination management skills are important for the sustainable development of tourism, cultures and places.

The Tourism Management Institute (TMI) is the professional body for destination management practitioners, with members drawn from all levels of the private and public sectors: national, regional, sub regional and local.  As the destination management section of the Tourism Society, TMI seeks to support professional development within the sector, for potential entrants as well as existing practitioners.

Assessment and recognition by TMI means that you can be confident the course will provide you with the knowledge, understanding, skills and experience which will fully prepare you for a career in tourism destination management.

You will develop your understanding of planning and development, tourist behaviour, marketing, finance and strategy with regards to a wide variety of tourism contexts, including festivals, heritage sites, cities and rural market towns.

You will develop your skills by engaging in practical activities that are currently in high demand in the public and private sectors, such as consultation processes, marketing and PR campaigns, consultancy and systems evaluation.

There are many tourism businesses, organisations and events in the Peak District National Park, so you will be able to get involved in consultancy work and real life based learning at the Buxton Fringe Festival, Derby City Tourism, Peak Adrenaline, High Peak Borough Council and our own Devonshire Dome Visitor Experience project, for example.

You will develop the strategic skills for day to day operational and long term innovations in quality management and customer satisfaction, and you will explore a range of management processes and learn how to apply them in a variety of situations.

Our team specialises in tourism management, not just generic business. Some of our staff are actively engaged in research projects for tourism management partnerships, and others are looking at the regeneration of market towns through tourism.

You will meet a variety of industry representatives, who regularly collaborate with us. For example, we have recently worked with Peak District Food to support the promotion of Derbyshire foods for the Olympics 2012 and  with the Llangollen International Eisteddfod (Festival). We currently work with UNESCO Derwent Valley World Heritage corridor, Chatsworth House and Visit Peak District and Derbyshire. We have strong international links and partners in teaching and research in tourism, including universities in Italy, New Zealand, Hungary and Greece.

This is a classroom based course.

UK/EU students

• £695 per module (you usually take 9 of these modules in total)

International students

• Full time: £10,455 (in total)

*These fees apply if you're starting this course between September 2013 and August 2014. We recommend you check fee details with us though, as they can change. Costs can increase each year.

Part-time students

You will be charged a proportion of the full-time fee according to how much you study during the year.

 * Please note overseas students entering the UK on a Tier 4 visa will not be permitted to study on a part-time basis.

For more information on bursaries, scholarships and financial support, please visit our fees page.

All of the Postgraduate MA programmes at UDB are delivered both face to face and through blended learning (mixture of face to face and distance learning).

All of our modules are taught within Academic Calendar (September through to July), but the pattern of delivery is dependent upon cohort, industry and University input. This may include weekends, a block study week, weekly during the academic year or blended learning. The emphasis is on flexible teaching and learning.

Whether you are studying Full-time or Part-time, the MA courses require a great deal of independence of learning and application. Normally 20 Credits modules will take you about 200 hours to complete and 40 or 60 Credits modules will take you 400 or 600 hours to complete.

Learning in each module will be directed through lecturing input, module teaching materials and a variety of supporting learning activities. However, you should keep in mind that at Master’s Level you will spend approximately 60% of your time on independent learning, review, revision and assignment preparation.

Par-time students have the flexibility to study between 2 and 4 modules per year.

The teaching and learning methods used are diverse and may include lectures, seminars, tutorials, workshops, practical fieldwork exercises and online learning materials. The assessment methods allow you to further develop professional skills you can use in the workplace. Assessments include briefing reports, pitches, presentations, essays, unseen examinations, and case studies.

Whether you are a recent graduate, or an industry practitioner who wishes to consolidate his management knowledge and skills, this specialist programme will enable you to access a wide range of management positions in travel, tourism and destination management. Our graduates have taken up senior management positions in Official Tourism organisations; airlines; 4-star hotels; tour operators; travel agencies; NGOs and government related organisations. Many of our alumni have also moved into academia and the research arena.

Katharina Sickora, MA Tourism Management (Class of 2007-2008)

"The modules I studied during my MA course applied to the real world of work and certainly helped me with my job. I now work with international marketing in Austria." 

Sajith Sreedharan, MA Tourism Management (Class of 2010-2011)

"Staff in this faculty know each and every student by name which is great as they can give feedback according to each student. The tutors come to our level at discussions, and not theirs, which I think is really important especially since students can come from different parts of the world and see things differently. I guess I have had an international exposure by studying here, especially since the teaching style is so different back in India. Students there are literally spoon fed and told to 'go a certain direction' when doing their projects, but here they actually want us to do detours and u-turns!" 

Nina Enter, MA Tourism Management (Class of 2011-2012)

"I entered my course and liked that I was not just a number but all the tutors knew my name and the classes were quite small. The tutors take time to meet and discuss any issues."