HOSPITALITY OPERATIONS ANALYSIS - 2023/4

Module Overview

This module will introduce students to the operational issues facing hotels and the implications for profit performance. It will use an online dynamic market-place based hotel simulation exercise to allow students to experience the dynamics and complex interactions of hotel operations.

Module provider

Surrey Hospitality & Tourism Management

Module Leader

ASHTON Mark (Hosp & Tour)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 7

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

Module Availability

Semester 1

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

Indicative content includes:

• Hotel operations functions, challenges, and current issues


• Balancing stakeholders' interests


• Operations strategy and operation synergy, evaluating financial and non-financial information


• Business and operational planning


• Challenging current strategies and operational practice


• Horizon scanning to delivery high performance and growth


• Developing competitive strategies


• Control and performance measurement


• Performance analysis, evaluation and using key performance indicators to make decisions / allocate resources

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to draw on the student's experiences through the simulation exercise to build up a picture of the rationale and principles used to manage the business and explain the results achieved. In addition, students are asked to comment critically on the performance of their business as a whole and identify where alternative actions could have been taken. Students will also be asked to reflect on working in a team throughout the module.

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

Individual report

Students will be required to produce an individual report that evaluates the operational performance of the group's hotel, its competitive position, the actions taken and suggests alternative solutions to enhance future performance. Students will submit a 3,000-word written report.

Individual reflection on peer working 

Students will be required to critically reflect on peer working within their simulation group. Students will be required to apply a reflective learning model to their experiences using a maximum of 500 words to produce a summary note to accompany the applied model.

Formative assessment

Students will be required to contribute to running their simulated hotel through the module. In doing this a series of formative planning activities will take place, weekly operating decisions will be made, subsequent weekly results will be analysed and online data dashboards completed. A series of applied management exercises will also be undertaken on a weekly basis to explore operational tools and results in greater depth. All of these formative actitvities provide students with the necessary tools, techniques and models to build their individual reports from.

Formative Feedback

During the first online activity, the assignments and the feedback process is explained;

Feedback is also provided during and after online guided activities; As the online activities are built around topic-specific exercises in a group setting, students do not only benefit from lecturer feedback but also receive peer evaluations in their teams;

A pre-assignment feedback session is an integral part of this module. During this session, students present the annual results of their simulated hotel - a task which reflects the requirements of the assignment and receive feedback on their presentation;

Once marking is completed, students are provided with feedback, which contains detailed and generic feedback as well as a breakdown of marks. This enables students to assess their own performance compared to their peers.

Module aims

• This module aims to provide learners with a systematic understanding of the operational factors that influence the effective, efficient, and profitable running of a hotel. The module will focus on understanding how the various business functions interact and the performance measures used to judge success. The module will use a computer-based simulation exercise to allow learners to experience the dynamics and complex interactions of operations. It also aims to equip learners with the necessary judgement to take decisions about the future of an operation and evaluate their results.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to allow students to experience the pressure of managing a business operation using an on-line business simulation exercise and to link these experiences through a series of inputs and exercises to a series of underlying theories, concepts and models.

The teaching and learning methods include the use of the HotelSim business simulation which is a competitive management exercise approximating a real world environment in which several free-standing organisations are competing for business in a closed, but elastic, economic system. Each exercise runs optimally with eight competing teams and is fully interactive, so that no two years can experience exactly the same results, although the underlying economic model ensures that the key drivers can be identified. The simulation will be run in weekly online group-based workshops.

In addition to the simulation exercise there will be a series of lectures and seminars to expand on some of the key underlying principles and the issues discovered through the discussion of the simulation exercise. Students will also be provided through SurreyLearn with a series of guided study activities to extend their knowledge of the subject. The module will focus on providing students with a combination of the necessary conceptual knowledge and practical skills to lead and manage operations within hospitality organisations.

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: MANM498

Other information

This module adopts the University curriculum framework, which aims to develop learners with strong capabilities in Digital Capabilities, Employability, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability, and Resourcefulness and Resilience. This module contributes to the development of the following capabilities: 

Digital Capabilities: This module focuses on developing students’ capabilities in analysing operational data and capturing business insights for and from managerial decision making. Students will develop their skills in using descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics and data visualisation. They will learn how to use software to create a management information dashboard. Students will use the virtual learning environment (VLE), SurreyLearn, Hotelsim, a hotel simulation product and Microsoft software to facilitate learning. These include accessing teaching and learning materials and engaging with their instructors and peers. Module assessments require students to work collaboratively with peers to analyse datasets and create a periodic dashboard to present insights from the datasets. 

Employability: The assessments in this module require students to extract business insights from datasets and to create a dashboard, to present the managerial implications of these insights.These business analytics and data-driven decision-making skills will prepare students to be successful managers in the digital age. 

Global and Cultural Capabilities: Students will learn how to interpret results of operations analytics and their implications to service business in a global context by extracting, comparing, and contrasting individual and group behaviours, as well as sectoral, national, and regional differences captured from STR datasets. 

Sustainability: Students will learn how to reflect on how to interpret business intelligence to support sustainability in the services industry. 

Resourcefulness and Resilience: Students will be required to work collaboratively with peers to manage simulated hotels and identify relationships, extract patterns and critical insights from periodic datasets to help with this. Finding solutions through unstructured problems is the key learning aspect of this module that will develop students’ resourcefulness and resilience. 

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 2023/4 academic year.