The tourism industry is one of the leading contributors to wealth and international, national and regional employment, but currently it is submersed in a moment of change and restructuring of the model of tourism development.

The different tourism models implemented in the last decades need a renewal given that the new models of tourism development are aimed for new and more flexible visions where participation of all agents of the tourism situation have a greater intervention. At the same time, the tourism environment is progressively more internationalised where the phenomena of horizontal, vertical and cross integration stand out, which means a structural and competitive change in the industry. It is important that professionals, both from the public and the private industry, can face with sufficient training  these challenges that the industry sets up.

Objectives

The main objective of this Master's Degree in Tourism Management and Planning is to train students in a global idea (but not general) on tourism activity, able to assume new demands of the global environment and the impact on public bodies, private companies and research activity, within sustainability, ethics and governing parameters. 

This general objective settles on the following partial objectives:

• Knowledge of the development of tourism activity, its limitations and benefits, and to understand tourism markets from the local and international levels. 
• The training of specialists in tourism public management, who accept and understand the challenge of managing an activity that is in an on-going change, putting their work at the service of companies, administrations, citizens and tourists so that they produce a management philosophy based on a governance of the destination that is assumed by all agents.
• The training of specialist capable of understanding and analysing the complex processes for planning a destination passing on the responsibility of keeping habitats for future generations.
• To act within the framework of quality, competitiveness and sustainability demands, as well as the increasing internationalisation of companies.
• Training of high level professionals for managing and planning companies.
• Training of experts that guide their professional career towards research and development of knowledge in the area of tourism.

Competences

We understand by competence the interrelated and independent set of knowledge (required knowledge to suitably carry out an activity and/or produce new knowledge, capacity to know and understand), skills (to know how to, being it for resolving problems or to carry out any kind of task, academic or not; abilities), attitudes (to know how to adapt, participate and contribute to the sustainable development in its environment) and values (to know how it's going to be, assuming the values as an integral part of their nature, perceiving others and living in a social and environmental context) (University of Deusto, 2003).

In this sense, the graduated of the Master's Degree in Tourism Management and Planning must acquire the following competences related to:
 

(A) Basic:

• To have and understand knowledge that provides a base or opportunity of being original in the development and/or application of ideas, often in a context of research.
• Students are able to apply their acquired knowledge and their problem-solving capacity in new or barely known environments within more wide or multidisciplinary contexts related to their study area.
• Students are capable of integrating knowledge and face the complexity of express their opinions from an information that, being it incomplete or limited, includes reflections over the social and ethical responsibilities linked to their knowledge and opinions. 
• Students are able to communicate their conclusions (and the underlying knowledge and reasons that support them) to specialised and non-specialised people ina  clear way and without ambiguities.
• Students have the learning skills that allow them to keep studying in a way that will have to be in a great way self-directed or autonomous.

 
(B) Generals

• Capacity to present in front of an audience, the design of a project in a clear and cohernet manner, respond satisfactoryly critics directed to the project through argumented opinions and defend it with accuracy and tolerance. 
• Capacity to run people and leader managing skills in the tourism activity.
• Skills in the negotiation and solving of problems and conflicts.
• Skills to search, process and analyse information coming from diverse sources.
• Manage ICTs.
• Capacity to work in group and face problematic situations collectively.
• To act within the framework of Human Rights, democratic principles, equality principles between men and women, solidarity, environmental protection, universal accessibility and design for everyone, and improvement of peace culture. 

(C) Specific

• To analyse the structure of turism activity in all its levels, taking in account the components of sustainable tourism development, its benefits, as well as its limitations and risks. 
• Knowledge of the habits and practices of the area in its national and international aspects, as well as the inherent features of the different economic areas.
• To obtain a more wide vision of the commerical relations that encompass all the turism markets, focusing on business issues from both a local and global perspective.
• Knowledge of the methodology of the tourism governance.
• To write detailed reports on the tourism area and activity. 
• To detect opportunities and threats of different tourism markets, of its competitors in a short and long term, and its clients.
• To detectect new rising turism markets and open the company to them. Elaborate reports to advise in relation with rising markets.
• To adapt the commercial strategy to the peculiarities of each tourism company environment.
• To select and manage the access ways to the tourism markets.
• Capacity of managing tourim company departments.
• To assume managing and technical responsibilities in public and private bodies which objetive is to support manage of tourism companies.
• Manage a tourism department in the public administration.
• Understanding and adapting cultural particularities of each tourism market.