SUSTAINABLE TOURISM AND TRANSPORT - 2025/6

Module Overview

The module will follow the process of a sustainability management system to show students the process that organisations need to follow to identify and address the sustainability impacts that their organisation is responsible for. In doing so, we will review the impacts that the tourism and transport industries are causing directly or indirectly, and the opportunities for organisational change to acknowledge and address such impacts.

Module provider

Surrey Hospitality & Tourism 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

NA

Module content

Sustainability management systems

1: how to prepare a policy and conduct a baseline assessment, followed by a review of stakeholder management, and the economic, social and environmental impacts of tourism, with particular emphasis on climate change. Sustainability management systems

2: How to write an action plan, and implications for its operationalisation, reporting, auditing and review. Sustainability actions for key business areas, such as human resources, service design, operations management, suppy chain management, marketing & communications.

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

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 by two individual assignments.

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

• Individual Assignment 1. The individual assignment is a report. The essay word count is 2000 words. Sustainability management systems provide organisations with a systematic way of measuring and improving their environmental, socio-cultural and economic performance. You will write a baseline assessment for a tourism or transport organisation of your choice.


• Individual Assignment 2. The individual assignment is a report. The essay word count is 2000 words. Following on from the baseline assessment prepared in the first assignment, you will now write a sustainability action plan, with SMART targets and justified actions based on industry practice.

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.

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: MAN1141

Other information

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

Global and Cultural Capabilities: The module revolves around the roles of sustainability management systems in the private sector to develop a systematic approach to identifying and managing their impacts. Since students are from different countries with diverse cultural backgrounds, class discussions and seminar exercises will be used to reinforce students’ global and cultural capabilities. 

Employability: Guest lecturers will present up-to-date insight from the tourism industry on relevant topics and provide an opportunity for students to learn directly from tourism stakeholders. Students will gain knowledge on current developments of impact identification and management in tourism and transport, and be taught to critically evaluate these practices. They will also learn how to develop strategies to manage these developments. All these skills can be transferred to various situations at the workplace, including problem-solving tasks.  

Sustainability: This module motivates students to critically evaluate the impacts of the tourism industry on society, environment and economy through a case study analysis and class discussion. Students will be guided in developing action plans for minimising negative impacts of tourism development in the local communities, environment and/or economy based on their knowledge of sustainability, sustainable tourism and transport indicators, and the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Resourcefulness and Resilience: The assessment strategy which comprises two stages: formative assessment and summative assessment. Through this strategy, this module empowers students to build self-evaluation into assessment processes and create spaces for students to reflect on their own performance whilst reviewing feedback. The structured schedule of the two-stage assessment will also support students in developing time management skills. Also, students are motivated to make informed decisions from a range of options as to which aspect of their work they would like to request feedback. The critical nature of the in-class discussion will help foster openness by encouraging students to understand and discuss contrasting perspectives.

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 2025/6 academic year.