Skills You Can Learn In A Specialised Tourism and Hospitality Management MBA Degree

Considered by many as a necessary qualification in today’s fast paced business environment, the Master of Business Administration (MBA) is growing in popularity every day. Graduates of the programme possess well-rounded business skills and can be confident that they have gained a practical and relevant knowledge, ready to be applied into their role.

Many students opt for the generic MBA in order to improve their knowledge in all key areas of business. There is however the option to specialise throughout the MBA, with students graduating as an expert in the field. One of these options is to gain the MBA (Tourism and Hospitality Management), graduating as a specialist in managing in these industries. As one of the world’s largest employment industries, the demand for effective tourism and hospitality managers is extremely high. Critical to the smooth operating of businesses such as restaurants, hotels and resorts, effective managers ensure that profit margins remain high, maintaining the satisfaction of customers and staff at all times. There are many skills acquired throughout this specialist MBA programme, with four specific areas explained below:

Entrepreneurship

As an area that is considered important across many facets of business, skills in entrepreneurship see students understand key components of being an entrepreneur. Whether it is understanding the issues involved in creating an entrepreneurial organisation and services, or how to foster high-speed innovation – all skills are useful as a tourism and hospitality manager. In addition, entrepreneurial skills allow you to demonstrate creativity and flexibility in developing proposals for an entrepreneurial organisation, and can be applied in almost any organisation around the world.

Event Management

Upon completion of the MBA’s event management subject, students will be able to integrate event management principles to tourism and hospitality related projects. Skills in event management see students demonstrate strength in developing proposals for an event, with the integration of marketing, public relations and evaluation strategies. Students will also recognise the nature of the event industry, its links to tourism and the role of strategic alliances in event management. 

Strategic Hotel Management Issues

Critical for Tourism and Hospitality managers, the understanding of strategic hotel management in the context of organisational and management theory is an important skill to have. After completing study in this area, students will be skilled in discussing the multiplicity of issues in managing hotels, from human resources and finance, to food and beverage, and security. Students will also be able to apply strategic perspective to the effective management of a specific hotel, ensuring their skills can be adapted to a wide range of hotels.

Strategic Resort Management Issues

Whilst this is similar to the above skill, competence in this area allows students to effectively differentiate between the operations of a resort to the operations of a hotel. When considering resorts, attention also needs to be placed on the recreational issues, and reviews in guest activity planning. Students will also have a high order of skill in analysing and critically evaluating resort management practices, making them an all round versatile manager.

The above four skills are just a handful of the many topics covered throughout the specialised Tourism and Hospitality Management MBA. I’d love to hear from current Tourism and Hospitality managers, or any past or present students of the MBA, as to which skills you believe are the most important in this field? Share your experiences and join the AIB conversation below.

This article was written by Laura Hutton on behalf of the Australian Institute of Business. All opinions are that of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of AIB.