This is an introductory module for cruise tourism management. The main aim here is to provide an overview of the cruise sector’s developments over the last decades, focusing on aspects such as product development, branding, core processes in cruise operations and itinerary planning. Apart from that, the module conveys an understanding of the importance and operationalization of safety and security in the cruise sector.
Unique and individual / personal / international
The cruise industry has proven through its rapid recovery after the Corona pandemic that it is an industry with high importance for the future and that is already in search of professionals both on shore and on board. The Cruise Business study program prepares students to work in various areas of the cruise industry. Our students are trained for tasks in product management, marketing, sales or personnel. Possible employers are shipping companies, tour operators, terminals or suppliers.
The specialisation "Cruise Business" offers various specialised modules. On the one hand, students learn about tasks that have to be managed in the cruise industry - from itinerary planning and offer design to managing of safety regulations and marketing. In addition, the external conditions and the strategies of the cruise industry must also be considered. Which trends in society must be taken into account by shipping companies and how can companies successfully use these for themselves? In the 8th semester, students actively engage with current cruise research in the module "Cruise Tourism Research" in an interactive, new learning format.
Another special feature is the "Business Competencies" module, in which students work on a project for a real cruise company over the course of two semesters. Here, the lecturers acquire projects that deal with current challenges in day-to-day business. The students take on the role of consultants who independently develop solutions in exchange with the customers.
Program overview
The purpose of this module is to enable students to gain an awareness of the issues and challenges affecting the cruise sector within the wider environment in which it operates. Furthermore, and in order to deal with a dynamic business environment (strategic planning), the interests of various stakeholders (business development) and the complexities of public opinion formation (reputation management), openly and rigorously engaging with the economical, ecological and socio-cultural sustainability aspects of cruise tourism constitutes a core competence for future cruise management practitioners. More specifically, students attending this module will be required to apply an evidence-based approach to evaluate controversial discussions reflecting multiple perspectives and their corresponding interests. Extracting value and integrating different, and often opposing, perspectives as well as learning through others’ experiences lies at the core of effectively managing cruise tourism and its future.
This course is the final component empowering the students as ‘expert-learning practitioners’, allowing them to develop in-depth knowledge and expertise in a particular aspect of cruise tourism. This reflects an additional level of management area specialisation within the cruise tourism domain. Here, students have the opportunity to empirically research and expand their expertise on a particular issue / question related to a facet of management practice applied in the cruise context (e.g. human resources, finance, marketing, law, information technology management). This module integrates the learnings from the cruise management modules and research methods and techniques of the earlier semesters and encourages students to transfer the acquired competence as a further education method.