2nd year project (7.5 ECTS)

TOPICS
 

The topics for the 2nd year project are:

 • Tourism and Hospitality:  Contemporary Issues in Tourism Demand

 • Arts and Culture: Cultural Economics and Policy

 • Service and Innovation: Service Development

 

This course deals with the factors influencing the development of contemporary tourism demand from an interdisciplinary perspective. It introduces theories and empirical studies at the forefront of research in the field of tourism. Students gain insights on factors that impact on the ability, motivation and experience of travel in a fast changing world such as tourist embodiment, performances, commodification, authenticity, gender, sexuality and digital communication among others.  The course presents the latest  theoretical frameworks from the perspective of several social sciences to comprehend tourist behaviour and tourist consumption.  It examines the complex interrelationship between technological development and tourism demand.

 

The course will provide an overview of the cultural sector, cultural economics and cultural policy. The course will show how economic theory can be used to analyze economic problems in the cultural sector, dealing with issues like market demand for arts and culture, determinants of participation in arts and culture, market failures like externalities and public goods in the cultural sector, non-market demand for arts and culture, cost-benefit analysis, production, productivity and the earning gab (Boumol and Bowens disease). Cultural policy will be analyzed using relevant theoretical models, and concrete examples of cultural policy at the national as well as at the local level will be analyzed and discussed. Current issues such as culture in local and regional development and experience economy will be covered.

Service and Innovation: Service Development
Societies, economic environments and culture change over time, creating dynamic conditions in which organizations and particularly businesses, need to work, survive and prosper. This course will examine and discuss factors that drive the creation or transformation of services, by exploring entrepreneurial and creative processes in various service settings. Besides an obvious element of creativity, the course will investigate and analyse the adaptation of services to shifts in customer needs, stakeholder demands and other contextual conditions. The course combines a series of theoretical discussions with applied work, and aims to provide students with the competences required to experiment with service development processes.
 

 

Tourism and Hospitality
 • Develop and present a scientific problem related to tourism demand

 • Critically analyse and apply theories and concepts

 • Select, explain and apply appropriate methodological frameworks

 • Analyse and discuss theoretical implications, and present managerial recommendations of the problem examined in the project

 • Write and present to audiences an academic research report

 

 • Explain the central models, concepts and theories presented through the course

 • Critically assess the strengths and weakness and the value and relevance of the models, concepts and theories presented through the course in relation to their practical application.

 • Apply the models, concepts and theories presented throughout the course on concrete cultural economic problems.

 • Analyze a problem based on selected theories and methods and argue for the cultural policy implications.

 • Reflect on the consequences of applying different theories and perspectives on a selected cultural economic problem.

Service and Innovation
 • To explain and apply main concepts and processes related to service development
 • To identify and critically analyse factors that influence the success of service development
 • To select and apply concepts from the course to specific cases
 • To develop, motivate and present a project that explains the relevance of and the methodology for the development of a specific service

 

7.5