Master of Tourism and Hospitality Leadership

Purpose

The purpose of the Master in Tourism and Hospitality Leadership is to enable learners to master the principles of business leadership with practical applications to the tourism and hospitality industry. The qualification offers learners the opportunity to master entrepreneurial and marketing skills, and applicable concepts regarding business strategy, human resources, and financial management necessary for the advancement of a leadership career in the tourism and hospitality industry. This qualification will promote and ensure a high level of theoretical engagement and intellectual independence, as well as the ability to relate knowledge and the ensuing applied competencies for leadership to undertake highly skilled work.

The qualification is suitable for learners who aspire to advance their professional careers in tourism and hospitality organisations or their entrepreneurial endeavours. As a result, the qualification emphasizes practical applications of the theories, systems, models, policies, and legislation of tourism and hospitality business leadership. The envisaged target audience for this qualification will be current managers with leadership aspirations within the tourism and hospitality industry. The qualification strives to develop and enhance the strategic leadership proficiencies of learners to prepare them to fulfil a leadership role in the industry. The qualification will provide learning opportunities for both current leaders for the sake of professional enhancement and aspiring professionals with a leadership goal. Qualifying learners will be able to apply their learning in areas of tourism and hospitality leadership.

The qualification features a blend of knowledge application of lived experience in the tourism and hospitality industry and is designed to develop graduates who will demonstrate applied knowledge and skills to advance leadership professionalism. Offering the qualification in a distance mode will create an opportunity to provide learners who are employed, or other non-traditional learners, to further their careers as business leaders while gaining further industry-related experience. Learners will be able to achieve the intended outcomes through high-quality distance education provisioning and their learning will increasingly be mediated and supported through a variety of technologies. All interactions to support learners to attain the outcomes focused on content, learning activities, assessment, and support will therefore be integrated and will be facilitated through a digital approach.

Upon completion of the qualification, qualifying learners will be able to

• Conduct self-reflective and autonomous introspection for an individual to identify and develop his/her leadership skills for the benefit of the community or organisation in which they operate, focusing on ethical professional leadership and business practice
• Accumulate knowledge literacy which supports the ability to evaluate current processes and system design. Demonstrate financial management skills within an organisation using complex specialist knowledge.
• Engage with advanced marketing focused on problem-solving marketing-specific concepts to select and apply appropriate and creative methods, techniques, processes, or technologies to complex practical and theoretical problems. Adapt to changing marketing contexts and emerging trends.
• Provide entrepreneurial proficiencies and innovation to advance industry-related issues according to emerging contemporary, current, and relevant solutions.
• Design and apply novel ideas and creative methods to solve complex industry-related challenges.
• Examine context, systems, and policies to utilise a range of Human Resource-related proficiencies as a leader within an organisation
• Manage own independent learning strategies by demonstrating the ability to develop own learning strategies and interact effectively within the learning group as a means of enhancing learning.
• Demonstrate accountability by functioning independently and taking full responsibility for own work.
• Implement systems, lead and initiate processes, and display good resource management and practices.
• Recommend and validate processes for a leader to inculcate a culture of life-long service leadership focusing on proactive sustainability.
• Interpret current and originate new health and safety risk management documents and structures.
• Interpret and evaluate steps to build capacity as a leader in the co-creation of thriving sustainable tourism and hospitality environments.

These competencies will support the learners to secure employment and/or career progression in the tourism and hospitality industry, with specific reference to various management positions.

Rationale

The tourism and hospitality industry has grown in complexity and competitiveness over the years. The main benefit of this qualification is the contribution to leadership capacity building within management levels of the tourism and hospitality industry. The qualification is linked to regional, national, and international needs as it emphasises the relationship and significance of relevant leadership skills to be successful in the industry. As a result, the demand for postgraduate competence to support complex leadership roles and strategic decision-making at the industry-wide level has grown. The current lack of adequate business leadership competencies in South Africa and beyond plays an important role in the high failure rate of small businesses in the tourism and hospitality industry. Suitable leadership strategies are required to address business failure and to improve the government's goal of increased employment rates. A need for strategic tourism and hospitality leadership has been identified. The qualification will be focused on leaders who can manage change, are competent in risk management, understand and competently lead structures of an industry constantly in flux, show innovative leadership, and are aware of the vulnerability of the industry to macro-environmental factors.

According to the latest data published by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the tourism industry accounts for 10.4% of the world's GDP, making it one of the largest economic sectors worldwide. With 8.8 trillion US dollars, tourism establishes itself as one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, being surpassed only by the manufacturing sector. It is far ahead of other important sectors such as financial services, health or technology. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the tourism and hospitality industry has created 20% of total world employment since 2013. Based on these concepts, there is an immediate need for a strategic tourism and hospitality leadership qualification. The growth of the industry requires leadership skills to advance the sustainability of the industry.

The Culture, Arts, Tourism, Hospitality, and Sport Sector of Education and Training Authority (CATHSSETA) describes the sector's skills planning, including hospitality and tourism-related professions that should be acquired and developed to address South Africa's skills needs in the Training and Development Professionals. The qualification was designed with input from the Academic Advisory Committees to ensure the qualification will meet the needs of the tourism and hospitality industries. The institution's Advisory Committee feedback identified a gap in advanced leadership skills, which this qualification will address. The Executive Dean, in consultation with the Head of Department, identified this qualification suited for distance offering using a fully online approach. Continuing consultation with the Academic Advisory Committees, Work Integrated Learning (WIL) employers and industry partners reflect the current industry needs, while reflecting on other higher education institutions, both locally and internationally, inform amending offering modes to include distance offerings. This places the offering within the current sphere of various distance programmes responding to the needs of learners in a rapidly changing higher education context.

Higher education institutions in South Africa and across the world are constantly facing numerous challenges. One of these emphasised challenges refers to widening access for marginalised groups through flexibility of learning, and the opportunity to make advantageous use of emerging technologies for non-traditional learning opportunities. The unconventionality of the tourism and hospitality industries is further exacerbated by unforeseen and disruptive events. Due to these complexities, it is often impossible for working professionals to attend residential campuses, and digital approaches widen access and create opportunities. The distance mode of provisioning will enable full-time employed candidates to enroll for the qualifications and improve their studies. The qualification therefore strives to create an enabling environment of equality that provides individuals who, under usual circumstances, might find it challenging to enroll for contact mode with a digitised learning experience. This is aligned to the CHE Good Practice Guide that explains distance learning as allowing for more flexible provision of learning opportunities so that lifelong learning can take place alongside other life commitments such as work, family, and community engagements.

Distance offerings allow for a holistic learning experience where learners draw and apply their working experience to answer questions and solve realistic problems. Distance education, supported by the continuous advances being made in educational technologies, provides new possibilities for reaching and teaching these non-traditional learners. These innovations place a high demand on an institution to explore and adapt, to provide learners who find themselves in remote, rural, or geographically dispersed areas with access. By offering this qualification through a distance mode of delivery, the barriers of time, geography and economics are removed, allowing the affordance of upgrading workplace skills to a larger, diverse group of learners who wish to acquire qualifications without having to travel to the institution to attend on-campus lectures.

This qualification will allow for specialisation in Tourism Planning, Policy Development, Sustainable Tourism and Hospitality Leadership. It will also include an important research-related module to ensure a balanced perspective of expectations of the tourism and hospitality leadership contexts to inform the environment within which the graduate must operate. The exit outcomes meet national and regional labour market and social-cultural needs. The qualification is further fully online to reach a much larger geographical audience, attracting more learners from a more diverse population, which enhances the quality of education.

The distance qualification will reach a much larger geographical audience, attracting more learners from a more diverse population, which enhances the quality of education and contributes to rich and varied learning interactions. The distance mode of provisioning is focused on accommodating working professionals and non-traditional learners. Working conditions of the industry do not make contact classes possible which can be an insurmountable hurdle for the academic pursuits of prospective learners who find that it is almost impossible for middle and higher management in the tourism and hospitality industry to attend contact classes. The target market for the qualification, therefore, includes South African learners, but also learners from the African continent, and international learners. This will help create a diverse group to filter into a globalised experience so that the distance study enhances collaborative experiences of working with and learning from other learners. Because the qualification is not limited by geographical boundaries, expert guests can be used as resources to enhance learning experiences.

Graduates achieving this qualification will demonstrate competencies in, inter alia, entrepreneurial, marketing, human resources, policy, and financial skills, thus equipping the graduate with a set of crucial and essential leadership skills to increase organisational success. The qualification will provide access for marginalised groups such as women who are in the tourism and hospitality industries, but who are not necessarily in leadership. The qualification will therefore contain a social justice component and a focus on the African continent's future relating to leadership in the tourism and hospitality industry. Many learners are already working and learning programme gains can be integrated into organisations for the benefit of these organisations. Learners return with new proficiencies for the sake of their communities and organisations, but also to open doors for their own promotion and advancement. Current managers (holding public office, private individuals, or as part of organs of state) who are aspiring to advance their leadership within the tourism and hospitality industry will find this qualification highly beneficial.

The qualification will allow graduates to pursue a professional leadership articulation pathway as opposed to a research-based postgraduate pathway. A relevant industry-focused programme is therefore needed, as other qualifications, where the focus is often solely on business management, would not fulfil the needs of the tourism and hospitality industry. The qualification will provide industry professionals in the tourism and hospitality industry the opportunity to develop themselves as leaders in an academic pathway to gain a solid academic foundation for strategic leadership competencies, and to accommodate these professionals through a distance mode of provisioning.

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)

It is the policy of the institution to assess prior learning in accordance with statutory requirements to enable a person to gain recognition and credit for competence. The assessment refers to a combination of flexible ways of evaluating an individual's formal, informal and non-formal learning experiences, against a registered set of outcomes and standards. This qualification will apply RPL according to the institution's approved policy.

RPL for access

• Learners who do not meet the minimum entrance requirements or the required qualification that is at the same NQF level as the qualification required for admission may be considered for admission through RPL.
• To be considered for admission in the qualification based on RPL, applicants should provide evidence in the form of a portfolio that demonstrates that they have acquired the relevant knowledge, skills, and competencies through formal, non-formal and/or informal learning to cope with the qualification expectations.

RPL for exemption of modules

• Learners may apply for RPL to be exempted from modules that form part of the qualification. For a learner to be exempted from a module, the learner needs to provide sufficient evidence in the form of a portfolio that demonstrates that competency was achieved for the learning outcomes that are equivalent to the learning outcomes of the module.

RPL for credit

• Learners may also apply for RPL for credit for or towards the qualification, in which they must provide evidence in the form of a portfolio that demonstrates prior learning through formal, non-formal and/or informal learning to obtain credits towards the qualification.
• Credit shall be appropriate to the context in which it is awarded and accepted.

Entry Requirements

The minimum entry requirement for this qualification is

• Bachelor of Arts Honours in Tourism, NQF Level 8.

Or

• Bachelor of Arts Honours in Tourism Management, NQF Level 8.

Or

• Bachelor of Business Administration Honours in Hospitality Business Strategy, NQF Level 8.

Or

• Postgraduate Diploma in Hospitality Management

Or

• Postgraduate Diploma in Recreation and Tourism

Or

• Bachelor Honours Degree in a cognate field, NQF Level 8.

This qualification consists of the following compulsory and elective modules at NQF Level 9 totalling 180 Credits.

Compulsory Modules, Level 9, 128 Credits

• Tourism and Hospitality Business Leadership, 14 Credits.
• Strategic Financial Management for Tourism and Hospitality, 13 Credits.
• Advanced Tourism and Hospitality Marketing, 13 Credits.
• Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 14 Credits.
• Critical Issues in Human Resources Leadership, 14 Credits.
• Research Project, 60 Credits.

Elective Modules, Level 9, 52 Credits (Select any four modules)

• International Tourism and Hospitality Trends, 13 Credits.
• Planning Health and Safety Food and Accommodation, 13 Credits.
• Tourism Planning and Policy Development, 13 Credits.
• Sustainable Tourism and Hospitality Leadership, 13 Credits.
• Service Leadership, 13 Credits.

1. Conduct self-reflective and autonomous introspection for an individual to identify and develop leader skills for the benefit of the community or organisation in which they operate, focusing on ethical professional leadership and business practice.
2. Demonstrate financial management skills within an organisation using complex specialist knowledge.
3. Engage with advanced marketing focused on problem-solving marketing-specific concepts to select and apply appropriate and creative methods, techniques, processes, or technologies to complex practical and theoretical problems. Adapt to changing marketing contexts and emerging trends.
4. Provide entrepreneurial proficiencies and innovation to advance industry-related issues according to emerging contemporary, current, and relevant solutions.
5. Examine context, systems, and policies to utilise a range of human resource-related proficiencies as a leader within an organisation.
6. Engage in an agentic, self-critical process by evaluating knowledge and processes of knowledge production through addressing a complex problem by conducting and reporting on independent research in a defined area of specialisation within the actual practice of the tourism and hospitality leadership context.
7. Demonstrate the ability to engage critically and insightfully with methods, techniques, processes, or technologies as these pertain to current knowledge in the tourism and hospitality leadership context and use these abilities to address complex problems in the context.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 1

• Plan, conceptualise and manage resources and timelines, collect, critically analyse and synthesise information and data to inform innovative business and leadership decisions.
• Identify and analyse the characteristics of both positive and negative reputable leaders in business
• Apply self-comparison according to identified business leaders for self-reflection on leadership capacity and how to become a leader in business
• Make contributions to scholarly debates around theories of knowledge and processes of knowledge production relating to business leadership and the manifestation thereof in business communities
• Develop and design a self-reflective portfolio to demonstrate growth as an ethical leader

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 2

• Engage with principles and processes of revenue and apply management techniques to identify corporate problems and opportunities.
• Analyse the diversified processes of management and implement different financial systems for maximising revenue.
• Identify and apply financial models and project revenue; build the financial component of a business plan and use financial management.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 3

• Design and implement a progressive marketing plan applicable within an ever-changing environment.
• Identify a marketing trend and show how it will affect organisations.
• Produce an original marketing strategy with an innovative approach.
• Develop and manage marketing and communications strategically by using data and digital environments to design creative solutions for the interaction between tourism and hospitality organisations and their stakeholders.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 4

• Critique past innovations and creative ideas to determine how to manage entrepreneurship and innovation in tourism and hospitality organisations.
• Explore and implement entrepreneurial organisations and structures.
• Diversify and improve the current organisation through entrepreneurial skills.
• Investigate own entrepreneurial potential for personal entrepreneurial opportunities.
• Propose strategic organisational ideas to innovate for the future

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 5

• Identify, select, and apply interventions at an appropriate level within a Human Resources (HR) leadership organisation system focusing on critical issues in HR.
• Identify, select and apply interventions to the hierarchical relations within the system, justify and address the intended and unintended consequences of interventions.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 6

• Identify research a problem by critical evaluation from industry strategies, activities and processes.
• Examine and select appropriate research methodologies to address a research problem.
• Operate independently in the context of a research project from initialisation to final presentation and reporting.
• Prove proficiency in negotiation, managing resources, debating, formulating an academic argument, and analysis competencies.
• Complete a research project through an agentic process of being responsible for own work and decision-making, effectively apply appropriate relevant research methodologies and analyse the findings leading to presentation and meaningful recommendations.
• Successfully complete the phased research project through cycles of self-critique and engagement.
• Manage own independent learning and develop own learning strategies.
• Interact effectively within the learning group as a means of enhancing learning.
• Function independently and take full responsibility for own work to demonstrate accountability.
• Implement systems, lead and initiate processes, and display good resource management and practices.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 7

• Consider and critique a variety of concepts within the tourism and hospitality leadership context.
• Critically interpret and analyse various documents, structures, focus areas, service levels, and environments within the tourism and hospitality leadership context.
• Recommend improvements to these contexts from a proactive leadership perspective
• Design and apply novel ideas and creative methods to address complex industry-related challenges.