Tourism Destination Development – (M.Sc.)

As tourism is a major growth industry on both the international and national level, the need for planning focusing on sustainability of scarce resources becomes increasingly important. The future of tourism business rests on recruitment of well-trained personnel.

This programme addresses in particular those issues relevant to destination development. Its aim is for students to achieve a broad understanding of the possibilities and limitations of destination development. Swedish and Nordic tourism dominates in examples presented, but international outlooks are also present in cases and coursework.

In general terms, students are trained in the collection, processing, and analysis of data and other forms of information in order to arrive at informed opinions relevant to tourism destination development. This includes training in effective and relevant forms of presentations for different audiences.

Following a successful completion of this tourism programme students shall have attained:

* An extended knowledge of theory development and the research frontier in tourism and especially in destination development.
* The ability to assess global changes and interpret these in a local situation and un understanding of how regions and businesses are linked and interplay with processes at different levels of scale.
* The ability to critically assess the prerequisites and consequences of different strategies for tourism destination development
* The ability to critically observe social processes and issues and be able to discuss both in written and oral form these in a tourism perspective.
* The capacity to formulate questions which are founded both in theory and method.
* The capacity to collect, handle and analyse empirical data. This also entail the presentation of a thesis in which relevant concepts and theories are elaborated.