For more information, please contact Kaloudis Consulting: +306977809753
Executive Master in International Hotel Management
Term#1: 18 credits
Introduction to the Executive Master Program: A practical approach to Protocol & Etiquette (2 credits)
Course description:
This course explains various aspects of protocol and etiquette in official and unofficial events.
The correct way of addressing protocol and etiquette in public, in office, while attending or when organizing an event will be explored and practiced. It will be critical to the subject to develop cultural awareness as key for quality hospitality service in international environments.
Learning outcomes:
1. Discuss the differences between protocol and etiquette considering the origins and history and evaluating their influences and impact.
2. Recognize business etiquette and know how to develop and to maintain a professional image.
3. Analyze effectively codes of conduct for clients, suppliers and planners. Appraise the need for the use on netiquette when appropriate.
4. Apply specific protocol procedures for different type of events.
5. Analyze and apply general Restaurant Etiquette in both when delivering service and when receiving service.
6. Develop cultural awareness skills for international business relationships.
Advanced Hospitality Operations (2 credits)
Course description:
This course focuses on describing, analyzing different challenges in hospitality operations. Concepts like departmental cost control systems, capital and operating budgets, and resources optimizing techniques will be discussed. The student will learn to evaluate operations and implement corrective actions for managerial enhancement in rooms division and food and beverage departments.
Learning outcomes:
1. To analyze and evaluate the structure of the different departments, recognizing their challenges and providing solutions in order to improve the daily hotel operation.
2. To identify and recognize the necessary tools to optimize processes and budgets.
3. To implement right strategies of maximizing revenues and improving the development of the staff.
Marketing Strategies for Hotel Management (2 credits)
Course description:
In this course, the student will learn marketing concepts, principles, techniques, strategies in the digital era, and how digital marketing and omnichannel marketing are connected to the overall management of hotels. The hospitality and tourism industry are experiencing rapid and dramatic changes because of the 4th industrial revolution, therefore, knowledge and understanding of technology and marketing concepts are of vital importance for success.
Starting from the idea that the purpose of marketing is to create and deliver value to engage with consumers, and make long term relationships, the course begins with the examination of omnichannel marketing as one of the main strategic pillars in any company nowadays. Then we progress through an analysis of the business ecosystem, and how to create long term sustainable products and services for a wide range of digital travelers: baby boomers, generation X, millennials, generation Z and digital natives.
Learning outcomes:
1. Appreciate and learn the importance of omnichannel strategic marketing for the hospitality industry.
2. Working as a team to effectively create, design, develop and present a perfect marketing plan.
3. Apply strategic decision-making models in practical situations.
4. Develop and provide efficient solutions for given business problems in the digital age.
5. Appraise current business issues relating to marketing and business development in the global hospitality context.
Entrepreneurship and Business Modelling (2 credits)
Course description:
The course aims to develop an understanding of the process of entrepreneurship within the hospitality business environment. Building on a number of previously and simultaneously taught units, this course will provide students with the foundations for acquiring knowledge and skills to enable them to make a planned decision to proceed and develop ventures. Through business modelling, value enhancing decision will enable students to be more entrepreneurial within existing organizations and perform well when studying alternative or leading a project.
Learning outcomes:
1. Identify gaps/problems in the hospitality/tourism sectors
2. Create a concept using lean canvasing
3. Conduct market validation in order to assess business feasibility
4. Create forecasts to analyze future trends (Sales/consumption)
5. Understand the application of business strategies.
Leadership and Organizational Behaviour (2 credits)
Course description:
The course will examine the contemporary principles, techniques and research findings in hospitality leadership and organizational behaviour that are driving high performance and continuous improvement in hospitality. Leaders need to have a good understanding both of themselves and of those whom they will lead.
The primary goal of this course is to prepare students for advanced leadership roles in modern hospitality organization. Students will be encouraged to reflect upon their own leadership potential. Additionally, students will explore different work environments that meet the needs of culturally diverse employees or employees whose culture is different from their own. Commitment and performance are fostered by good human relations and leadership, so is change management too, and all demand proper attention be given to human resource planning, management and employee relations.
Learning outcomes:
1. Critically evaluate a range of leadership models and discuss their application to the business environment.
2. Appraise the factors of managing, leading and developing people within cultural diversity.
3. Evaluate the role, sources and effects of culture and conflict within an organization and discuss the issues of control and power in organization.
4. Evaluate the importance of managing organizational change in transformation times through understanding both, the business needs to keep improving and adapting to market demands, as well, as understanding strategies to effectively manage internal resistance to change
Advanced Finance and Budgeting (2 credits)
Course description:
This course is an introduction to using advanced planning techniques and tools in the budgeting process. Students will apply the theoretical concepts learned in class to solve budget exercises with extensive uses of excel.
Students will also learn how to analyze and estimate revenues and expenses under uncertainty, using forecasting and regression models, based on the historical data available.
This course also introduces performance estimation and risk through sensitivity, scenario analysis and Montecarlo simulation. Learning outcomes:
1. Implement advanced planning and control techniques in the budgeting process.
2. Managing the budgeting process.
3. Apply cost estimation techniques.
4. Forecast revenues and expenses under uncertainty.
5. Prepare Cash flow budget based on Income statement.
Revenue Management (2 credits)
Course description:
Revenue Management strategies are crucial for long-term sustainability in hotels. This subject provides students an overview of revenue management for the hotel industry in terms of a process created to increase revenue. Demand and pricing are important variables to be understood. Additionally, the students will be given a foundation in strategies and models, such as pricing models, forecasting, group management and overbooking, strongly considering the optimization of their assets and this critical management function for hotel business development and success
Learning outcomes:
1. Value the principles of revenue management.
2. Select adequate management strategies for demand, pricing, capacity, discount allocation, forecasting and other associated procedures essential to successful yield management.
3. Analyze the role of overbooking Vs business ethics.
4. Relate the principles of revenue management to F & B operations.
5. Determine customer profiling, the yield management best practices, and the role of information support systems.
6. Plan strategies for tackling occupancy and capacity problems
Innovative, Alternative and Sustainable Trends in Tourism (2 credits)
Course description:
The course will identify different alternative, innovative and sustainable trends in hospitality. This subject’s objective is to explain the needs of nowadays responsible travelers demanding alternative experiences. The course will provide an overview of Corporate Social Responsibility as an alternative principle in the business environment. Students will be able to identify and implement some good strategic practices and gain the skills to analyze, develop, and make recommendations for implementing strategic CSR in organizations or consumers wanting to behave responsibly
The course will also discuss and present different alternative touristic destinations as well as the importance of innovation in the hospitality sector.
Learning outcomes:
1. Describe and explain the main characteristics of alternative and sustainable trends.
2. Analyze the importance of innovation and sustainability in the hospitality sector.
3. Analyze the Social Responsibility strategy in organizations as well as provide proposals to improve the strategy.
4. Identify and describe the characteristics of the responsible citizen and social business in the globalized world
Data Analytics (digital) for Decision Making (2 credits)
Course description:
The course will equip students with the skills required to understand and interpret quantitative data. The course takes a holistic view of how statistical data analytics have developed as a means for hotel managers to make decisions. Statistical terminology and techniques, inferential statistics and probability theory are covered. Descriptive and predictive analytics, including different forecasting techniques are analyzed and applied to the hospitality industry. Students will sharpen their cognitive capacity to deal with numbers and statistical techniques by examining and practicing how quantitative data analytics impact managerial judgments.
Learning outcomes:
1. Understand fundamental concepts and digital tools used in descriptive and inferential analytics to treat with data.
2. Arrange data in order to convey meaning using tables, charts and frequency distribution.
3. Analyze patterns and relationships within the data.
4. Interpret the data.
Term#2: 14 credits
Applied Project (4 credits)
Course description:
The student will learn how to put academic research together with their specific business curiosity in order to create an applied project, supervised by relevant faculty in the area of knowledge. The student will be required to present a piece of work framed in the academic content provided during the academic program. Competent in the functioning of the operational side of the hotel (Term 1), the student will be presented with a business scenario that requires further action to take based in the circumstances given by the faculty. The student must prepare an action plan and an implementation strategy supported with relevant literature review that objectively arguments and supports the provided conclusion to the given problem.
Learning outcomes:
1. Assess the role of research in the analysis of a hospitality scenario.
2. Critically evaluate theoretical and practical perspectives to implement or assess the performance of a hospitality scenario.
3. Compare and contrast current and potential developments in hospitality management.
4. Develop key aims, objectives, phases, milestones, etc. learnt in the master’s program for a chosen area of application.
5. Create planning and monitoring techniques for a chosen hospitality scenario.
6. Design feasibility management processes to a chosen area.
Crisis Management (2 credits)
Course description:
Analyzing and assessing potential situations that can harm our organization are necessary to survive in our complex and rapidly evolving business environment. Often this analysis results in a contingency plan to anticipate our reactions to emergencies. Although a good risk management approach is a strategy to avoid a crisis, sometimes we are still faced with disruptive and unexpected events. A crisis will need an immediate attention to ensure business can return to normal as fast as possible, as well as protecting our assets and our reputation. Our current digital world does offer advantages in our management of a crisis although challenges such as fake news and leaks via social media can create damages to our organization. This course has both a theoretical as a practical approach to crisis management, including a base of risk management analysis and contingency planning.
Learning outcomes:
1. Understand and apply risk management processes and techniques to avoid a possible crisis.
2. Create a contingency plan for a crisis scenario or emergency.
3. Critically examine and apply tools to overcome an unexpected change or event that results in a crisis and minimize the damage that the organization can face.
International Human Resources (2 credits)
Course description:
Human resources management tactics are part of an organization’s strategy and need to be applied by all managers within that organization to achieve a competitive advantage. Managers therefore need to be familiar with common Human resources (HR) practices. These practices include recruitment, selection, performance management including development as well as compensation (or total rewards) . Significant challenges and contemporary changes can be derived from the globalization and force us to adapt these HR practices into an international context. International Human resources uses the advantages and will try to overcome the challenges the globalization of the work force brings to the organization.
Learning outcomes:
1. Examine, improve and apply tools and processes related with the common Human resources practices in an international environment (such as recruitment, selection, performance management).
2. Explain the strategic significance of total rewards and identify options available rewarding people within a global and diverse workforce.
3. Distinguish and create different policies approaches to address some contemporary Human
Resources issues such as diversity management and employee engagement
International Business Strategy in Hotels (2 credits)
Course description:
By taking this course the students will be able to understand a framework of the main elements in international management and global business strategy. International Business Strategy in the hotel and tourism industry nowadays requires the analysis of a huge, and a very complex ecosystem. Unreliable and incomplete information due to technology and fake news influences the ability to fight OTAs and the design of business strategies based on data available and collected.
This course offers a wide a range of elements (lectures, practical exercises, class discussions, case studies and presentations to understand how to adapt business strategies to different cultural scenarios. Therefore, students will have the opportunity to develop and practice analysis, investigations, researches and campaigns in a global business environment.
Learning outcomes:
1. Improve analytical thinking in a global business environment
2. Learn business management and international strategies in different cultures.
3. Apply strategic models as a data driven company by creating and design projects.
4. Formulate appropriate solutions for given business problems in global situations
Hospitality Real State and Investment (2 credits)
Course description:
Analysis of the perspectives of the Hospitality Industry from both the Operators´ and from the Real Estate Investment point of views, their respective priorities and needs, and their competing alternatives and conflicting interests.
Learning outcomes:
1. Legal structures. The use of Special Purpose Vehicle in Hospitality
2. Understanding Hospitality Operators´ projections
3. The Management Contract and the conflict between Operators’ GOP and Owners´EBITDA
4. Capital Budgeting
5. Investment decisions.
Project Management (2 credits)
Course description:
Project Management is a key factor in nowadays businesses by being able to implement successfully new strategies, products or services in any type of organization. Good project management ensures that stakeholder’s needs are met, costs are controlled, and objectives are well stablished within the organization.
It is undeniable that nowadays projects are an increasingly important aspect of any modern business including the hospitality industry. Therefore, this course provides a systematic introduction to the main aspects of project management.
The course also underlines the importance of understanding the relation between projects and the strategic goals of the different hospitality organizations.
Furthermore, throughout the course, the different stages of project management are reinforced by hospitality real life situation.
Learning outcomes:
1. Use the acquired essential project management skills effectively.
2. Link project goals to the stakeholder’s needs.
3. Set SMART goals to ensure results.
4. Initiate, plan, implement and close projects.
