SUSTAINABILITY IN TOURISM AND TRANSPORT - 2020/1

Module Overview

The growth of tourism and transport in the recent past have made global travel accessible to unprecedented numbers of people, however this progress has come at a high cost to the societies and the environments of the places visited, as well as having global climate change consequences. All stakeholders have a responsibility to contribute to sustainable forms of development, that allow us to balance the ambitions of a wealthier society with the capacity of the planet to sustain us. It is necessary to set stakeholder- and policy-agreed targets and action plans are needed to help prevent and mitigate the works impacts of tourism and transport which lead to the necessary investments in technology and behaviour change so that tourism and transport can contribute to sustainable development

Module provider

Hospitality, Tourism & Events Management

Module Leader

FONT Xavier (Hosp & Tour)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 4

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

NONE

Module content

The thematic areas that the module focuses on include:

• An introduction to sustainable tourism and transport

• Environmental sustainability and climate change impacts of tourism and transport.

• Social, cultural and economic impacts of tourism and transport.

• The motivations and barriers to sustainable behaviour change: individual, corporate and societal levels.

• Stakeholder engagement, materiality analysis and corporate social reporting

• Sustainability management systems: sustainability policies, baseline assessment, action planning, operationalisation, monitoring and evaluation.

• Technological advances to prevent and mitigate the impacts of tourism and transport.

• Resilience of transport and tourism to climate change

• Practical examples of current sustainable tourism management initiatives using case-study examples.

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

Alternative Assessment: PLEASE NOTE – In the event that a group project will not be suitable for re-assessment, an individual essay (2500 words) will be assigned

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate the awareness and insight of sustainability issues/ practices in public and private organisations, from a single business unit to a global level. Students are required to demonstrate knowledge of theory, research evidence and contemporary practice. The module is assessed 50% by individual assignment and 50% by group presentation.

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

• 50% Individual Assignment The individual assignment is an academic essay. The essay word count is 2000 words. Using relevant literature, students will be asked to review and evaluate why and how a public or private sector organisation case study undertook specific sustainability practices. Students will also reflect on they could apply their own sustainability values (theoretically) in a competing organisation to the one that is being analysed, who is not currently engaged in sustainability to the same extent.


• 50% Group Project: The group podcast (with supporting powepoint slides) will follow a sustainability management system format to show how the values and motivations of an organisation of your choice have informed their sustainability policy, how this has led to working with stakeholders to identify impacts and set out an action plan for the organisation. Because real industry information is patchy, we expect that you will use theory to realistically fill in the blanks where real data is not available, in order to tell a coherent story about the organisation of your choice. Each group member is required to participate in the preparation of the group’s podcast and each group must submit the podcast via SurreyLearn.

Formative assessment and feedback This module adopts an enquiry based approach to feedback where the emphasis is on providing resources to students which allow them to identify their own strengths and weaknesses in order to develop learning strategies which will allow them to improve their performance. These resources include: Prior to the assignment, lecture time will be spent discussing the assignment and feedback process; A detailed marking scheme which provides guidance on how marks will be awarded for each element of assessment. This marking scheme has benefits for both staff and students; for staff it allows for consistency of marking between markers and for rapid and rigorous marking, for students it makes it absolutely clear what is expected of them. Students will receive a mark for each element of the assignment which they can reference to the marking scheme for details individual feedback; Generic feedback which explains what students did well and did less well overall. This will take two forms. In the first lecture after submission, time will be spent explaining the key learning issues form the assignment and, once marking is completed, students will received detailed generic feedback via SurreyLearn including a statistical breakdown of marks so that they can place their own performance into that of their cohort.

Module aims

• This module investigates the positive and negative impact that tourism and transport have towards the ability of having sustainable livelihoods within the capacity of our planet. We will gain a greater understanding of mitigation adaptation and resilience to the impacts of climate change (and other societal challenges) that will require changes in tourism and transport practices in the long term. This module reviews the motivations and limitations of changing current business models towards one planet living, using theory and case studies, and it outlines some of the management tools and latest developments available to balance the economic, social and environmental demands placed on our industries and society.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to be in the form of lectures and seminars. Class room based activities should follow the weekly lecture to ensure theory taught is embedded by discussion and seminar activities. The lectures will comprise of teaching frameworks, concepts and examples of sustainability practices in the academic and grey literature. Seminars will operate on the basis of discussions of lecture materials/case studies, and some small group exercises/activities. Class time will be given for students to prepare their group presentations. Further, in order to invite student’s participation/ active involvement in class, all students are required to read the assigned reading every week before the planned sessions. In order to enhance student’s learning experience, a number of real/adopted case studies will be used for discussion in class. For some classes, students will also be given chances to participate in group exercises/activities for practical reason. This module will also make use of the University’s virtual learning environment to support learning. For example, in order to encourage discussion within each group, the online discussion forum will be used and online discussion actively encouraged.

The learning and teaching methods include 150 hours:

1) Weekly taught and interactive sessions (3 hrs per week x 11 weeks = 33 hrs), and

2) Independent learning for reading, research, and group discussion & presentation (Personal-directed/ self-directed learning = 84 hrs, and Group-directed learning = 33 hrs).

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: MAN1109

Other information

NA

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2020/1 academic year.