Business Management and Tourism with Placement Year

Explore current trends in tourism to be able to critique current issues and propose business solutions for the future. You’ll analyse the concepts and characteristics of tourism in relation to contemporary trends in destination management, niche tourism products, and the wider business environment. You’ll study a wide range of business issues across tourism, marketing, supply chain, finance and enterprise to gain a thorough understanding of key business issues.

Boost your employability with a placement year

You’ll have the opportunity to take a placement year to put the skills you’ve learned into practice in a real-world environment. We'll support you to find your placement and throughout your year in industry. Placements allow you to gain valuable experience to add to your CV, make industry contacts and help you to narrow down what kind of role you may be interested in after graduation. 

Industry integrated learning

We place great emphasis on real-world learning throughout the degree. You’ll make the links between theoretical business frameworks and the practicalities of the real business world with support from our academic team, who have a broad range of experience across key business areas.

We have developed extensive links with the business community and professional bodies to enhance the practical focus of the degree. You’ll regularly engage with employers as guest speakers, and students visit employers to engage in live project work. Employers also provide real life business issues as the basis for your assessments in a number of modules, meaning you’ll have the chance to work with real businesses on real projects before you graduate – adding valuable skills to your CV. 

Sustainable tourism

The programme is designed to contribute to environmental, social, governance and economic concerns and contribute to the achievement of responsible and sustainable development as articulated by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The goals are embedded in the programme content along with the UNESCO sustainability competencies and all modules are mapped to goals and competencies. This allows our students to become future generators of sustainable value for business and society, working towards a sustainable global economy ethically and responsibly.  

Please note that our modules are subject to change - we review the content of our courses regularly, making changes where necessary to improve your experience and graduate prospects.

Our teaching methods will be varied, interactive and engaging. You will take part in:

• formal lectures 
• tutor-led and student-led seminars 
• one-to-one and small group tutorials 
• work experience and consultancy projects 
• self-directed study 
• optional placement and internship opportunities 
• joint projects with overseas students.

How you are assessed

We mostly assess you through practical coursework assignments — the sort of tasks you might undertake in a workplace. Sometimes these will be individual tasks and at other times, you will need to work in a group. Assignments could include:

• business reports 
• research and consultancy projects 
• presentations 
• design of digital materials such as videos, blogs or augmented reality posters 
• computer-based assessments. 

You’ll graduate as a tourism specialist with a wide range of business knowledge, so you’d be well placed for rolls across the tourism or wider business sector in roles such as:

• Project management 
• Analysis 
• Consultancy 
• Accountancy 
• Operations 
• Human resource management 
• Marketing 
• Sales 
• Logistics 
• Finance.

Additional information about your studies

Teaching hours

Like most universities, we operate extended teaching hours at the University of Derby, so contact time with your lecturers and tutors could be anytime between 9am and 9pm. Your timetable will usually be available on the website 24 hours after enrolment on to your course.

Course updates

The information provided on this page is correct at the time of publication but course content, costs and other individual course details do change from time to time and are updated as often as possible, so please do check these pages again when making your final decision to apply for a course. Any updated course details will also be confirmed to you at application, enrolment and in your offer letter.

If you are thinking about transferring onto this course (into the second year for example), you should contact the programme leader for the relevant course information as modules may vary from those shown on this page.