Course summary

By studying this hybrid degree at Buckinghamshire New University, you’ll gain the extensive knowledge and understanding needed to dive into a career within the tourism and air travel sectors. Accredited by the Institute of Travel and Tourism (ITT), this course has been designed with input from top industry professionals, ensuring you gain the skills employers are looking for. Why study this subject? If you have a keen interest in working in the international travel and tourism sectors, then this subject is a perfect fit for you. Pursuing a degree in these areas offers an understanding of the behind-the-scenes operations, planning and management required by employers in these industries. This degree will give you a comprehensive insight across all aspects of tourism, with a focus on air transport, helping you gain the knowledge and transferable skills to start a career in these vast and varied sectors. There is a wide range of career paths that this degree could help you to take your first steps in, including working for airlines or tour operators, marketing agencies, ground handlers, destination management companies, tourism planning, events management and air cargo operators. Why study at BNU? This degree has been specifically designed to ensure you are learning the latest from the industry, our academics work hard to ensure your degree keeps pace with the continuous changes within the sector so that you graduate with the most up-to-date knowledge and skills that this energetic sector demands. Our teaching team includes skilled lecturers who have a high level of working knowledge from years of industry experience, which will allow you to gain a deep insight into the latest trends and requirements of tourism and air travel. In addition, guest speakers often deliver sessions to enrich your learning – the School has been proud to have welcomed speakers from the likes of TUI and British Airways. We are all about gaining practical and real-life experience, and our programme offers seasonal employment opportunities so that you can gain valuable skills to help kickstart your future career – previous placements have been with London Heathrow Airport, easyJet and British Airways among others. Being accredited by The Institute of Travel and Tourism means that you can hit the ground running from day one through gaining student membership of the institute. This membership affords you access to their rich industry-focused networking and careers events. Opportunity modules are a key part of the BNU curriculum. You’ll choose modules from a broad selection in areas such as sustainability, entrepreneurship, creativity, digital skills, personal growth, civic engagement, health & wellbeing and employment. Opportunity modules are designed to enable you to develop outside the traditional boundaries of your discipline and help you to further stand out from the crowd to future employers. What will I study? We will introduce you to the variety of social and economic impacts that the tourism sector drive forward at destinations and upon societies. Two specialty areas are also offered focusing on the air travel sector. As you progress through the course, you'll study sustainable and responsible tourism operations in the business tourism sector and niche tourism markets such as music tourism, religious tourism, culinary tourism and dance tourism among many others. You'll also have topics on aviation management, and be offered the opportunity to undertake seasonal employment. Later in the course you will study critical and contemporary issues in tourism such as dark tourism, the use of animals in tourism, sex tourism, terrorism and tourism, and the impact of pandemics on tourism among others. You’ll also study the management of tourism organisations at strategic levels in addition to the air travel-specific areas. You will also be given the option to either write a dissertation or study a course on business and enterprise.