BA (Hons) International Tourism Management with Placement Year

On a Sunday night, I’ll always write out plans for that week in a calendar on my wall to remember by lecturers, seminars, meetings with lecturers and classmates for group work, including my shifts for work. After I’ve got down the compulsory activities, I’ll enter all the social events or fun things I want to do, meeting with friends, lunches, activities to attend on-campus like Active Student roller skating parties or course parties where us students and lecturers get together. Then I’ll enter allotted times to work and study, concentrating on specific modules or assignments but trying to encompass some fun things to do throughout the day, or least some wellbeing time, whether it is going to the gym, reading, or doing my hobbies. Throughout the week, I try to stick to the calendar as much as possible, ensuring I do enough uni work to balance with the social activities, attending lecturers and office hours with staff. Between working a part-time job and having an active social life, I aim to get six hours of uni work done per day, depending on how close deadlines are.

Especially in the final year, it’s so easy to get caught up in assignments and workload but staying physically and mentally active goes further than procrastinating at a screen for an hour on end. With the girls on my course, we always make time for Friday lunch where we sit in the de Hav café and catch up before our final lectures of the week. We often catch up with other mates in there, making it a social area and a nice end to the week and we try to book study rooms in between lecturer gaps to have some downtime or catch up with notes together. There plenty to do on the weekends too, including EleHouse and the forum on College Lane Campus, St. Albans has a great nightlife with all sorts of bars and pubs and Hatfield has the Galleria, a massive outlet shopping area which is great to walk around. I’ll normally work a few hours over the weekend at the gym and finish my shift off with a swim before going to Aldi or Asda to get my shopping for the week. My girls and I sometimes meet up in the evenings to enjoy a film and wine night too which is a fantastic way to replenish for the week ahead.

As a final year tourism management student who take a placement year, I’ve had four years to experience the university and strength my course offers. One of the best things about my course must be the lecturers. It’s a very cliché thing to say but the team are so strong and friendly! Referred to as the THEM team (Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management), the lecturers are all good friends and it shows; and I would genuinely consider many of the lecturers my friends too. They are always down for a chat, helping with assignments and lecture notes wherever possible. Our module leader, in particular, is fantastic and we have little social events with the THEM team, such as Christmas parties fueled with prosecco and orange juice, career networking with hundreds of job opportunities and it is always someone’s birthday within the tourism management course so there is a constant supply of cake! The team are professional, knowledgeable but super approachable and kind-hearted too with our interest in the forefront of their mind.

My course has so many aspects to it as well, so I’ve covered modules such as tourism planning, HR (Human Resources), strategic business management, data analysis, international field trip and niche tourism. The best module was the international field trip whereby we went to Marbella in the second year and undertook a photograph observation assignment. Not only did we go but we were able to plan our own trips and ended up in this really secluded, beautiful village called Ojen, which lead to a shift in my career path and influenced my placement year which I’ll talk about a bit more in a second. The course also entails a whole load of trips, ranging from The British Museum, World Travel Market, Signature Airport (a private airport where we viewed the operations, apron and guest suites - we even sat in the same chair as Beyoncé), Shakespeare’s Birthplace and loads more. The opportunities within this course are endless. My placement year was one of the best opportunities I had too, where students take a year out to work in an industry-related role, having a hands-on experience learning from industry experts. This is not a mandatory part of the course either so students can simply do a three-year course or take the placement or study abroad choice. I worked within an organization called Wendy Wu Tours, designing tailormade holidays and ended up setting up my own team, managing and training days which gave me a heap of experience. In the meantime, my course mates went off to all corners of the world including Japan, Spain, Singapore, and Disneyworld so there are endless opportunities.

There are a plethora of reasons why I chose Herts but the main one, for me, was the opportunities available within my course, Tourism Management. With a sandwich year available, I was granted the opportunity within a dream job which has helped with my career direction post-graduation, which wasn’t necessarily available at other universities. In addition, 80% of the tourism management course also took a placement/study abroad year meaning we can all graduate together! Secondly, the teaching staff at Herts are highly knowledgeable, professional and had great connections from a quick LinkedIn search, which, upon reflection, was fully used throughout my degree with many networking events, guest speakers and course trips.

Moreover, geographically, Herts is in a great position. Central London is only a 20-minute train ride away and I was close enough to home for some of my mum’s classic roast dinners. Based just a few minutes walk from campus, the Galleria has some awesome shops and restaurants to check out if you fancy some time off, which is also great for job opportunities for students. Herts also has some cool socials and nightlife; from EleHouse, The Star Bar and The Forum, there’s always something going on to get involved in. The Forum does theme nights too which are always a crack, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 90s classics and the Christmas party is always a highlight. Aside from partying, the Active Student events were super appealing, from sunrise yoga to roller-skating, these free events allow students to meet new people and get active together, alongside over 100 societies to get involved in.