Tourism – Services Management – Global Tourism Business Specialization (GTB)

This course will focus on North American destinations in their uniqueness as tourism destinations. Students will gain the knowledge of major tourism destinations of the following countries Canada, United States of America, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Antarctica, by examining the physical landscapes, resources, history, culture, heritage, products, services, and attractions unique to each regional area within each country.

This course is designed to provide students with an introduction to the Canadian business environment, business issues and functions, and the major forces at work in the global economy. It provides students with a perspective of business firms as integrated organizations composed of a number of specialized functions.

Accurate and timely information is imperative in today's changing job market. This course is designed to engage the students in a variety of hands-on exploration modules to help provide a strong foundation for job readiness and career mapping in the tourism and hospitality industries. The course focuses on developing essential skills by promoting team building, career and personal development, research and communication which will allow students to find, evaluate, manage, update a resume and expand their career goals.

This course is designed to current tourism trends, in the leisure travel market, beyond basic travel reservations. The components include the leisure travel sales, the leisure traveller, current top leisure destinations, current cruise trends, the present and future trends in tours, including adventure tours and ecotourism. Leisure services such as groups, incentives and travel insurance are discussed, and will prepare you to perform applicable functions.

This course will focus on international destinations in their uniqueness as tourism destinations. Students will gain the knowledge of major tourism destinations in Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and Africa by examining the physical landscapes, history, culture, resources, products, services, and attractions unique to each regional area within each country.

With the advent of the Internet and other technologies, tours and other products are increasingly distributed directly to the public and thus are no longer wholesaled. This course will focus on travel product suppliers, retail and wholesale intermediaries and the consumers, how and why travel products are packaged and distributed to the public. This course also addresses the internal and external booking systems utilized by tour operators, airline and industry personnel as well as the consumer. The focus is on challenging the student to investigate information and price retrieval by the use of various travel and tourism systems.

This course will introduce students to the foundations of Sport Tourism Development, and an overview of the planning process for a Sport Tourism Event. Sports Tourism refers to vacation or business travel that includes spectating or participating in competitive or non-competitive sports or recreation and leisure activities. Areas covered include logistics of event-based sports tourism, politics in sport, sport marketing, sport facility operation, and industry trends. Sport Tourism has become a major demand for many countries around the world and the growth. The process of creating bid proposals for sport events is also discussed.

This course will introduce students to an overview of the Canadian Legal System, and Laws, relating to human rights, contracts, consumer protection, insurance and agency. It will also examine the concepts of risk management and legal liability in Tourism, Recreation, and Hospitality sectors. Legal issues pertaining to tourism and travel industries in the context of improving tourism management, day-to-day operations, decision making, and service leadership will be explored.

Tourism Research and Entrepreneurship involves the students in the innovative and ever-changing side of the tourism industry. The students will explore the historical and modern changes in the economy, in business models, and in state of the art tourism products. This enables the students to understand the process behind the creation of a tourism product of their choice and to critically analyze the innumerable academic and business market sources of information available. Through this course the students will develop a personalized area of interest in the field of tourism and build a portfolio of supporting theory and examples to begin bringing their interest to fruition. A broad understanding of the industry is taught by touching on the digital economy, disruptive technologies, the peer-to-peer economy, service co-creations and data analytics. The students are empowered to re-invent and innovate the tourism industry by envisioning new possibilities of tourism, hospitality and leisure products and services. Students are active participants in the teaching process and not just passive consumers of theory, acting as points of reference to one another, enabling each other to build their ideas. In Week 6, each idea is then iteratively analyzed and refined through a dialectic process continuing until the end of the course. The students will learn to critically evaluate variant sources of formal and informal market research and academic theory related to the industry.