SUSTAINABILITY IN EVENTS AND HOSPITALITY - 2025/6

Module Overview

This module explains why event managers in the events and hospitality industries cannot afford to ignore sustainability as a business imperative. Throughout all the functions of a business, sustainability should be taken into account, and this perspective underpins the module.

Through the lens of sustainable development and management, we will critically discuss how sustainable practices can be developed in various geographical and socio-cultural contexts. This will culminate in a review of sustainability management systems that reflect different approaches to problem-solving and impact that can be applied to organizations working in diverse international contexts.

Module provider

Surrey Hospitality & Tourism Management

Module Leader

HEHIR Christy (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

n/a

Module content

Indicative content includes: Classifying and understanding sustainability practice within events and hospitality management 

Identifying environmental risks/opportunities from a business perspective 

Explaining how to establish, implement, maintain, and manage a sustainability management system 

The role of social marketing in sustainablity

Sustainability communication, and the role of Public Relations in sustainable events and hospitality

Long term impacts and future issues and trends for sustainability management in events and hospitality

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of wide range of dimensions in sustainability design and management for events and hospitality as well as the possible green impacts events and hospitality businesses can create via their sustainable practices.

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

• Assignment - individual report, max 2000 word.

In this report, students need to analyse the sustainable practices in one identified business, with regards to the various dimensions of sustainability design, implementation and evaluation.

Formative assessment: Students will be given tasks to practice on during lectures and seminars which support their overall learning and their summative assessments.

Feedback: Students will receive feedback on their performance during the module in the form of written and verbal feedback in workshops to inform the summative assessments.

Module aims

• To encourage students to understand the sustainability agenda and impacts events and hospitality can have on this.
• To enable students to understand a range of pertinent issues in sustainability management nationally and internationally
• To develop students' skills in researching fast-moving contemporary issues and develop solutions to better manage sustainability in events and hospitality, using a range of academic and industry source material.
• To develop students' creativity, evaluation, and writing skills.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to: provide students with key information about the various impacts, evaluation measures, and management of the events and hospitality industries to encourage them to explore, debate and evaluate these challenges and develop sustainable solutions. Furthermore, the learning and teaching strategy is deigned to develop students' cultural awareness, digital literacy, confidence and competence in working with others, leadership, communication skills, employability and professionalism.

The learning and teaching methods will be a blended learning per week with lectures, seminars and guided independent learning. More specifically this will include,

• Lectures and guest lectures designed to provide a framework of knowledge


• Seminars (with case study exercises) to provide opportunities for students to gather and interpret their own material


• Tasks to challenge their thinking.


• Students may also undertake site visits where they will get to visually inspect an event venue or hospitality business to analyse the potential sustainable practice it employs.

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: MAN1157

Other information

This module aligns particularly with the following two pillars of the Surrey Curriculum Framework:

Global and cultural capabilities:

International sustainability inherently requires international and cross-cultural perspectives, collaboration and communication. Case studies in this module draw on a wide range of international and diverse perspectives. Further, students will develop their ability to work in groups effectively with other students from diverse backgrounds to broaden their world view, own perspectives and interpretations and reinterpreting issues against a broader spectrum of ideas and representations.

Resourcefulness and resilience:

The module content and structure are centered around resourcefulness and resilience, both in terms of resilience of the event industry, as well as fostering student resourcefulness and resilience. Students will develop an opportunity-centred mindset and leadership, demonstrating confidence in responding effectively to opportunities, challenges, problems, and setbacks, reflecting and learning from own performance and experiences, and develop solutions.

Sustainability:

Sustainability is at the core of this module, aligning with the UN Sustainable Goals. Sustainability issues discussed in this module include, for example, climate crisis and carbon emissions from events and hospitality businesses, issues of health and economic inequalities, as well as management related to political and cultural issues. Lectures and seminars give students the opportunity to explore specific topical aspects of sustainability, including the UNWTO's sustainable tourism strategies, and the in more depth specification of the British Standards for a sustainable event management system.

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 2025/6 academic year.