Courses

Online MS in Hospitality and Tourism Management | White Lodging-J.W. Marriott, Jr. School of Hospitality and Tourism Management

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Core Courses

Purdue’s online Master of Science in Hospitality and Tourism Management equips service professionals with advanced strategic and analytical skills needed to lead in a range of industries. The program’s updated curriculum ensures graduates are prepared for the quickly evolving service economy. Designed for working professionals, it offers flexibility, hands-on learning, and an accelerated completion timeline to help students advance their careers. The master’s requires a total of 30 credit hours of coursework — 21 credits of required coursework and nine elective credits.

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Leadership requires an understanding of human behavior, organizational culture and strategy. In this class, students are exposed to leadership theory through the extant literature. Facilitated by readings and class discussion, students develop a critical and analytical understanding of how theory informs and connects to practice. The course topics include human resources functions, organizational and human behavior, human values and motivations, team dynamics, decision-making, and change management. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach, with student learning drawn from different fields.

Total credits: 3

This course addresses the unique challenges and opportunities in marketing the intangible, inseparable, variable and perishable service products. Balancing theoretical research and practical applications, this course provides a systematic review of key components and processes for an effective integrated marketing communication plan for service industries. Students will learn how to leverage both long-standing and emerging marketing communication approaches (e.g., strategic marketing and promotion, branding, public relations, digital marketing, social media, influencer marketing and artificial intelligence applications) to create customer awareness, manage customer expectations, build customer relationships, and ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Total credits: 3

Understanding the fundamental principles of service management is essential to successfully manage service organizations in a complex market environment. This course utilizes major theoretical frameworks, such as Service-Dominant Logic, to address key issues in managing service organizations, including creating a service culture, motivating a service-minded workforce, co-creating service value and achieving service excellence. Students develop managerial skills through a thorough understanding of service strategies, systems and processes to optimize service value.

Total credits: 3

The success of service organizations requires the well-planned design of the service environment and customer experience journey to enhance operational efficiency and excellence, drive customer satisfaction and loyalty, and differentiate from competitors. Addressing the importance of developing and providing optimal customer experience in service industries, this course aims to inspire a design-thinking approach to create contemporary customer experiences in various service settings. By gaining insights from the service design theories, students will gain knowledge to effectively manage the physical environment, service interactions and service delivery processes to enhance the overall service experience quality. Learning by practice, students will apply the learned design tools to envisage, blueprint and devise innovative service experience solutions.

Total credits: 3

Revenue management is a vital strategic tool enabling decision-makers to coordinate various functions leading to company-wide profit maximization. This course empowers students with analytical tools to generate optimal revenue solutions in a competitive marketplace. In the course, students learn the economics of pricing and market competition, models and algorithms for capacity allocation, overbooking, and forecasting through a variety of real-world contexts.

Total credits: 3

Strategic management plays a pivotal role in helping industry leaders gain a competitive advantage and accomplish business goals in an ever-changing marketplace. This course centers on the exploration of various theories, frameworks and models to understand contemporary issues and challenges in service industries. Through the application of strategic management principles and strategy-oriented tasks, students comprehend essential topics in strategic management, including environmental and competitor analysis, strategic planning, strategy formulation, strategy execution, and strategic evaluation and control.

Total credits: 3

In today’s highly dynamic business environment, decision-makers often encounter problems that are complex and data-intensive. This course focuses on a variety of techniques from the field of business statistics and exposes students to statistical and decision analytics to solve data-driven decision-making problems. The course adopts a practical spreadsheet-based approach to facilitate decision-making and explores the practical applications of these techniques across various functional fields, with a specific focus on service industries.

Total credits: 3

Electives

Understanding how and why consumers make decisions about purchasing goods, services and experiences allows companies to tailor their business strategies, product development and customer service efforts to meet the specific needs and preferences of their target customer base. This course addresses the growing demand for professionals to better understand psychological, social and situational influences of consumer behavior. This course provides students not only with an understanding of consumer behavior concepts and theories, but also with the tools and methodologies that can be directly applied to real-world scenarios to navigate dynamic markets, effectively engage customers and drive business success in today’s competitive marketplace.

Total credits: 3

Asset management is an indispensable discipline in the hospitality industry, aimed at maximizing the value of hotel properties in alignment with the owners’ and investors’ strategic objectives. A competent manager in the industry needs to possess a basic understanding of asset management principles and practices for operational and strategic decisions. This course exposes students to the multifaceted world of representing ownership interests in managing hotel investments, and helps students to establish a robust corporate finance foundation to become a competent manager in the industry. Through this course, students develop a nuanced understanding of the intricate interplay among operational issues, real estate management, and financial decisions, and effectively apply the learned knowledge to hotel real estate investment and operation strategies.

Total credits: 3

Notwithstanding the importance for healthcare services to prioritize clinical outcomes for patients, there is a growing need to think about the patient experience beyond science-driven, evidence-based practices. The healthcare sector is being transformed by consumerism and transparency that demands a more holistic approach to managing the patient experience. In order to promote patient engagement and to enhance their experience, an intentional strategic intent, as reflected in a service excellence mindset, is required. This course seeks to establish the foundation of this mindset for healthcare professionals that are driven to make a difference in their patients’ lives. The aim of the course is for students to develop a greater appreciation for the complexity of providing excellent service in the healthcare industry. The course will stimulate students to think differently and more deeply about the patient experience through a service management lens. In doing so they will develop the necessary skills to make effective decisions in the constantly changing patient experience landscape. Permission from the department is required.

Total credits: 3

In the rapidly evolving healthcare industry, optimizing the patient experience remains a fundamental focus of practice. Addressing the practical challenge and complexity of providing excellent healthcare services, this class aims to inspire a design-thinking approach to reimagine and reinvent the patient experience in the contemporary healthcare systems. Learning by practice, students will apply the design tools to envisage, blueprint and devise a patient experience solution. Gaining insights on experience-centric innovations in the healthcare domain, students will develop capabilities to better manage the service interactions, facility and processes to enhance the quality of the patient experience and ease the stress of a hospital stay. Permission from the department is required.

Total credits: 3

The modern work environment is increasingly focused on working with people in teams — working with people and for people. In seeking to motivate and lead people, it is imperative to acknowledge individuals have different backgrounds, perspectives and viewpoints. In successfully balancing the challenges of working with people in the labor-intensive, diverse and high-stakes nature of the healthcare industry, this class seeks to provide knowledge on organizational behavior concepts (e.g., employee performance, satisfaction, engagement and motivation; group behavior and teamwork; emotional labor, stress and work-life balance) and the skills to practice this knowledge as a healthcare professional. This course will provide students with the foundational building blocks to adapt to the changing landscape of the work environment, applying theories and exercising critical thinking skills to realize a transformative healthcare workforce experience. Permission from the department is required.

Total credits: 3

Students will have the opportunity to choose curated electives to support specific career goals. Please speak to your academic advisor for details.

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