Elective “Entrepreneurship & Business Developement in Tourism Management”

This module basically focuses on business development in the tourism industry and went on for two continuous weeks. Through this module, we MTM students (MBA in International Tourism Management) were able to gain hands on experience about how to use various models to create, evaluate and check the feasibility of different business ideas. We learned how to describe the business, how to carry out market analysis and competitive analysis to build a business model. We were introduced to topics like finding out the go-to market strategies, planning of operations and management. Finally, we also analyzed the finances for three years of the startup that we came up with (income statement, opening balance sheet, break-even analysis and sales forecast).

The biggest takeaway from this module was that it simulated the real-world situations that one might encounter when starting up a new business. We ended up gaining confidence for starting up our own businesses in the future, which is a good thing for an MBA student. ;-)

Comments on the Module

Anja Papathanassis, lecturer: “What I love about that module is that people develop their own ideas, they come from a brainstorming session and they really take on those ideas and make them into a complete business idea.” 

Asuka Kiuchi, student: “It was like a step by step learning, so it was easy to catch up and understand the lectures.”

Abhilash Apoorva, student: “Some of us had to pretend to be a young entrepreneur and some of us were investors and we had to pitch an idea for 60 seconds.”

Omkar Salve, student, about his group project: “We designed an application for women who want to travel solo throughout Germany. It’s called ‘Go Girl’ and it allows women to get updates about restaurants, accommodation and it also has a safety feature, which enables them to contact the local authorities in case of emergencies.”

Studentin Michelle Quek: “All these insights actually gave us some food for thought as to how we can go about being an entrepreneur in the future.”