Tourismus und Regionalplanung

The master’s degree program "Tourism and Regional Planning - Management & Geography / Tourismus und Regionalplanung - Management & Geographie" is a degree program leading to a Master of Science (MSc) degree.

This two-year master’s degree program offers not only in-depth knowledge in Economics, Human Geography and Tourism Studies, but also a broad range of skills in an extremely fascinating yet very complex economic, sociocultural and ecological topic – tourism.

As the competition for travelers constantly increases, innovative products, sustainable spatial planning and flexible management concepts are needed. To meet these challenges a tourism professional needs to be able to assess the chances and risks and must be skilled at problem solving.

This international, practically oriented master’s degree program therefore offers you as a student the chance to examine the theoretical, interdisciplinary and spatial context of the extremely dynamic field of tourism and, as a future tourism professional, to assess its global and regional dimensions.

What does the master’s degree program have to offer you?

The main emphasis of the master’s degree program "Tourism and Regional Planning / Tourismus und Regionalplanung" is on regional planning and the development of destinations. It combines various relevant and interdisciplinary aspects of these subjects. The focus is on teaching both basic economic/business and human geographic concepts that will form a background for a theoretical-holistic view, and it attempts to provide practical insights into complex relationships between economic growth and regional development, between tourism practices and spatial impacts. 

Topics that are covered include such phenomena as hybrid, multi-optional consumers in a global culture who appear to be becoming increasingly similar - the collapse of information monopolies in a technicized world leading to new communication and distribution channels - global economic challenges and the regional economic responses to them - new types of mobility and the impact of tourism practices, planning and business models.

All of these aspects can be recognized in regional developments. We investigate them both theoretically and practically. The goal is to examine the bases and static elements of tourism practice and on the other hand to analyze the constant sociotechnological change that interrupts conventional tourism practices and creates new phenomena in tourism, regional planning and the development of destinations.

In spite of these dynamics one thing remains unchanged – to be able to do professional work in tourism, regional development and tourism planning you need a solid education. As a future tourism professional you need to acquire theoretical knowledge that is comprehensively geared to the constantly changing questions and challenges of tourism practice.

Interdisciplinary program

The interdisciplinary concept behind the master’s degree program is based on the premise that “tourism” combines differing types of thinking and acting – tourism as a component of economic processes – tourism as a “product” marketed and managed according to the principles of business administration – tourism as the spatially relevant individual travel practice of relevant prosumers – tourism as a “product” of political conditions and regional planning activity. Only when these approaches from the fields of economics, business administration, cultural and economic geography and tourism studies are considered together do they reflect the realities of tourism and regional planning and form the basis for a sound science of tourism, regional science and location-based science.

This is the special feature of this master’s degree program. It links academic disciplines that, taken together, enable you to get a view of the big picture. It promises you a sound and future-oriented education that will prepare you for your later professional work.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.