Dual Diploma DD in Travel, Tourism & Hospitality Management TTHM

 ● ● Introduction to the Program ● ●

Course: Istituto Europeo’s Dual Diploma in Travel, Tourism & Hospitality Management (TTHM hereafter) prepares students for a wide array of rewarding careers within one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing industries.  This program offers a comprehensive set of core theoretical requirements and practical experiences that provide solid foundations in a variety of areas: accounting, cultural economics, management, international business, marketing, communications, human resources management, events planning and management, market operations, tourism strategy and more. TTHM aim is to prepare students to excel and lead in the biggest economic sector in the world.

Location: According to some estimates, in the present-day world economic scenario, one out of 10 workers is employed in the tourism industry. Over the next ten years, it is forecasted that the industry will grow at a rate of more than 4% per year. Undoubtedly, this sector promises real opportunities for fulfilling and exciting careers. And it is hard to find a more appropriate and relevant place to earn a Dual Diploma in TTHM than Florence, in Tuscany. Florence, once the cradle of Renaissance, is one of the world’s most visited tourist destinations, celebrated for its architectural and artistic heritage. Traditional Tuscan cuisine, a unique cultural and artistic patrimony, and a welcoming and warm atmosphere make it a must-visit for any tourist. Florence is sometimes depicted as one of the world’s largest open-air museums – and it is. But Florence is much more: it is also a vibrant, metropolitan city that has retained its political and economic splendor in Europe since the Renaissance era. Florence offers many opportunities to millennials looking for engaging experiences and preparing to relevant and rewarding professions in the sector. There is really no better place to study Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Management than Florence.

Course focus: IE’s Travel, Tourism & Hospitality Management syllabus is specifically intended to provide students with the planning and management skills to relate to the current expansion and development of the travel tourism sector throughout the globe. The combination of Italian language courses and core business courses with specialized modules in travel and tourism provides a perfect theoretical base. On the practical side, the ‘real-world experience’ component of the program provides students the nowadays indispensable know-how.

Progression Pathway: Our DD programs are intended for students aiming to be introduced either to the Italian job market or, in its second concentration, to Italian universities in a variety of fields. As an official C.I.L.S. Preparation Center (Certificazione di Italiano come Lingua Straniera – Certification of Italian as a Foreign Language), our institute prepares students to undertake successfully the Italian language test which is a prerequisite for admission to bachelor’s degree programs in Italian Universities. As an accredited Center for Professional Training recognized by the Italian Region of Tuscany and the Italian Ministry of Education, our institute has accumulated over 15 years of experience in running successful internship programs in a variety of sectors.

 

 

● ● Course Details ● ●

• Duration: 1 Academic Year (6 months coursework + 6 months internship/training project)
• Level: Further/Continuing Education
• Language of Instruction: English (Students must meet one of the following language requirements: IELTS 5.0 overall with a minimum score of 4.5 in each section; TOEFL iBT 45; CAEL 40, or equivalent) except for Italian language course.
• Entree Eligibility: Students who have successfully passed a 12^th grade standard/Higher Secondary School or equivalent level of examination from any recognized educational institution.
• Next Intake Dates: TBA
• Graduation Requirements: Obtaining a passing mark in all examinable modules.

● ● Course Structure ● ●

The one-year Dual Diploma in Travel, Tourism & Hospitality Management consists of 6 months frontal, classwork studies followed by 6 academic months of practical training in the form of an internship in a hotel, restaurant or any other relevant touristic enterprise.

Semester I – Coursework

During the first semester, students will attend Italian classes, learning to master conversational and written communication as they practice linguistic structures and tenses, with a focus on proper pronunciation. Students with more advanced skills can focus on more complex sentence structure and verb tenses. The emphasis is on reading, writing and comprehension.

But most of all, students have the entire city of Florence as their personal classroom! Whether they’re total beginners or practically fluent, students will be amazed at how much better their Italian becomes and just how much fun learning a language can be when immersed in the culture.

The program provides for the following six modules of Italian language plus one special module dedicated to the C.I.L.S. exam:

IT 101 – Beginning Italian Language I

 This courses initiates students’ development of the four basic skills in the Italian language—speaking, listening, reading, and writing—through in-class activities and the opportunities available to students living in Florence. It also introduces the Italian people and culture to students. This first beginning class cover basic pronunciation, sentence structure, numbers, present-tense verb conjugation and the introduction of past tense.

 IT 102 –Beginning Italian Language II

 This class picks up where the elementary class ends, covering more in-depth use of the past tense, along with the imperfect, future and conditional tenses as well as subjunctives.

IT 201 –Intermediate Italian Language I

 This course continues the student’s development of the four basic language skills—speaking, listening, reading, and writing—and further augments their knowledge of the Italian people and culture. Building on the foundation of previous study or direct experience with the language, these intermediate courses are directed to students who have already achieved an elementary mastery of Italian. This first intermediate class cover relative pronouns, synonyms and antonyms, the use of prepositions and superlatives, and a more in-depth exposition to conditional and past tenses.

 IT 202 –Intermediate Italian Language II

 This course continues beyond IE 201 the student’s development of the four basic language skills—speaking, listening, reading, and writing—and augment their knowledge of the Italian people and culture. This second intermediate class cover subjective mood (present, past, imperfetto and trapassato), indirect and combined pronouns, hypothetical situations, agreement of tenses and an introduction to common/idiomatic expressions.

 IT 301 –Advanced Italian Language I

 This course aims at furthering student’s knowledge and fluency of the four basic language skills – speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Taking for granted the competences acquired during the intermediate level, these advanced courses are directed to students who have already achieved an intermediate master of Italian. This first intermediate class cover the passive and impersonal form, the use of the gerund, subjective tenses (agreement), and direct and indirect discourse.

IT 302 –Advanced Italian Language II

 This course expands beyond IE 301 the student’s mastery of the four basic language skills – speaking, listening, reading, and writing – providing them with an advanced understanding of Italian life-style and culture. This second advanced class covers the use of the infinitive, trapassato remote, the comprehension of advanced literature, syntax and advanced conversation and composition.

IT Special Topic – C.I.L.S. Exam Preparation

This last module is held during the weeks immediately prior to the exam dates established by the Università per Stranieri di Siena and aims to provide a thorough preparation in the specific skills required to surpass successfully the C.I.L.S. test. The preparation includes the analysis and simulation of mock exams from previous years (overview of the sections of the test, assessment criteria, time-management), and the resolution of specific problems identified by the teacher (grammatical or vocabulary lacunas) through targeted reinforcement activities.

The Dual Diploma in Travel, Tourism & Hospitality Management will prepare students for flexible and dynamic careers in this expanding international marketplace. Alongside Italian language courses, throughout the first academic semester, students will be equipped with essential sector knowledge and marketing and management skills. The program features courses in the following four key areas:

TTHM 101 – Accounting Essentials for the Hospitality Industry

This module aims at imparting student the required knowledge, understanding and skills to use and elaborate cost information for budgeting and forecasting purposes in business management – with emphasis on the specificities of travel and tourism businesses. It explores how cost data is collected, organized, analyzed and elaborated into useful information for business managers. Students will be encouraged to apply these elements of accounting during various class activities, collective exercises and by in-depth analysis of tourism companies’ case-studies. Furthermore, the course deals with budgetary planning and control. It investigates the ways in which businesses prepare forecasts and budgets and compare these to actual economic outcomes. Finally, the module deals with different costing and budgetary mechanism and systems as well as with the possible causes of resulting variances between the latter, alongside with the possible corrective actions that business managers should implement.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Describe, explain and implement double entry bookkeeping principles;
• Prepare a set of end-of-the-year accounts, including any appropriate financial adjustments needed for a single trader, business partner and a limited company;
• Comprehend the functioning and complete accurately a cash flow statement;
• Complete a financial ratio analysis of a company’s accounts and make sound judgements and comments on a company performance based on their accounting data;
• Describe, explain and calculate accurately different costs elements;
• Describe and explain the essential concepts and principles of break-even analysis and undertake the relevant calculations accurately;
• Describe and explain the elements and principles of budgeting and the essential aspects behind budgetary monitoring.

TTHM 102 – Elements of Business Administration & Development

Have you ever wondered what traits billionaire Bill Gates, technology visionary Steve Jobs, or Tesla CEO Elon Musk all have in common? After this course, you may possibly find that you already possess in you some of those qualities as other successful entrepreneurs. This business module is intended as a survey course that will carry you on a journey through contemporary business vocabulary, core concepts, and issues. The core aim is to develop a workable and up-to-date business vocabulary, perfect critical and analytical reasoning, and improve your business management and decision-making skills. In this course, students will acquire this set of capacities by engaging with relevant reading material, collective class exercises, and research assignments that simulate the workplace reality. Furthermore, by attending this unit, you will be imparted the necessary knowledge and understanding to better define your professional trajectory and career path in business.

Learning Outcome

By the end of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Understand, describe and explain the nature and purpose of businesses in terms of their core activities, their necessities and responsibilities;
• Describe and explain the structure and categorization of businesses;
• Understand the variety of objectives in a business and appreciate and evaluate the different stakeholder perspectives and needs;
• Understand how the external business environment may generate opportunities but also potential threats for a business;
• Understand the economic determinants of the production scale, the location and types of productive processes;
• Explain the need for, and describe the means of, quality monitoring and stockage in production;
• Understand and explain the marketing process in terms of the identification, targeting and satisfaction of a target market and customers of reference;
• Understand and explain marketing strategy and planning;
• Describe and explain relevant sources of finance for different business purposes and forms;
• Understand the importance of human resources management and human resource planning.

TTHM 103 – Introduction to Hospitality Management 

This unit has been designed to give students a thorough theoretical and practical grounding in the hospitality and events industry and it has a strong vocational emphasis. Particular focus is granted to incorporating current industrial developments and practices. This is achieved through a variety of educative strategies including: lecturers utilizing their close links with industry representatives, collective class exercises, organizing site-visits, and, finally, industry scenarios and case studies.

Learning Outcome

By the end of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Define, explain and elaborate on the interrelationships and interdependencies between the travel, tourism and hospitality areas and their constitutive concepts (e.g. leisure and recreation);
• Identify and comprehend the major trends and regularities with regard to tourist movements and tourism flow patterns;
• Individuate and understand the function of each sub-sectors of travel, tourism and hospitality and the role that each play in the totality of the tourist experience;
• Define the core international travel and transport developments that have affected the tourism industry in recent years;
• Understand the key role of intermediaries within the travel and touristic system;
• Recognize and categorize the core types of tourist groups and their main necessities;
• Understand and explain the main motivational factors underpinning tourists’ choices of travel;
• Identify the basic requirements for the growth of a tourism destination and its businesses;
• Evaluate a government’s engagement involvement with main public tourism organizations at both national and international levels.

TTHM 104 – Principles of Marketing & Communications

Business communications is a term which encompasses a multitude of activities and operations, including, but not limited to, the followings: strategic communications planning, PR (including also social media, broadcast and written communications etc.), public reputation management,  media relations, brand management, customer services, employee communications and more. Nowadays, SMEs often engage solely with a few of the communication activities above listed, while larger companies and organizations tends to implement instruments drawn from the entire spectrum of communication techniques. Given the complexities of developing and performing simultaneously such a wide range of communication skills, communications specialists tends to limit their expertise to one or two of these strategies, while also displaying working knowledge of the majority of them. To this day, the most important and most commonly appreciate skill that communication professional may possess remain still the followings: excellent writing skills, social and interpersonal abilities, and, last but not least, the capacity for critical and strategic thinking – three skills that this module aims to impart to its students.

Learning Outcome

By the end of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Understand and explain the principles governing the transmission of information in business situations;
• Compose all the most used types of written communication in a clear, concise and correct way, with particular focus paid to presentational skills and neatness;
• Describe the principles of an effective oral communication;
• Explain the positive and negative role of non-verbal signs in communication;
• Describe and identify common barriers to successful communication and explain how to possibly surpass them;
• Summarize effectively and concisely a variety of business documents;
• Describe the roles of modern technology in modern business communication;
• Describe formal and informal communications structures in business situation and explain why, and how, they function;
• Understand and employ a contemporary business vocabulary, and also explain the benefits and drawbacks of its use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Semester II – Internship/Training Project

At the Istituto Europeo of Florence, we prepare students for dynamic career paths also by imparting practical knowledge and skills. And how could these be acquired if not by hands-on experience? As an accredited Centre for Professional Training by the Region of Tuscany (FI0738), the Istituto Europeo of Florence has accumulated over 15 years of experience in running successful internship programs and now gives the opportunity to TTHM students to gain first-hand, working experience through training projects in local tourism-related businesses: hotels, festivals, museums, media companies, travel agencies, and other travel-&-tourism-related organizations. Upon completion of the first academic semesters, students from the Dual Diploma in TTHM will find themselves equipped with the necessary management skills and operational knowledge to undertake their 6-months internship/training project. Airlines, hotels, cruise lines, resorts, restaurants, museums, and galleries – all look for interns with the skills that are taught on this program!

For further information and costs, please contact info@istitutoeuropeo.it