Study experience 
Master in Tourism Innovation

Key features

With the Master's programme in Tourism Innovation the students will embark upon a challenging journey of growth, both from the professional and the personal point of view.

The programme is designed to provide advanced expertise and hands on experience to

  • professionals who desire to boost their career
  • students who want to develop the skills needed the future managerial roles of one of the fastest growing industry in the world.

The key features:

  • innovation and trends that will drive the future of the industry: AI, digital tourism, new luxury hospitality, tourism experience desing, circular economy, climatic chance and more
  • hands on approach: live projects, labs, industry days, field activities
  • industry classes: direct eeting and sicussion with managers and entrepreneurs – professionals teaching other professionals
  • internship at the most important companies and institutions in Italy and abroad, or recognition of credits deriving from working activity
  • networking with the industry professionals, starting form the 1000 Alumni of  the long lasting  Master Ciset, that educated the Italian tourism managers for 30 years
  • the most innovative international experts and teachers

Learning journey and schedule

  • Labs, Industry classes, Special guests lectures, lectures: from 23rd January to December 2025
  • Timetable: online classes on Thursdays afternoon and Friday (all day), form January to May, and from mid-october to the beginiing of December e
  • Intesive and immersive weeks: March 2025

  • Internship: from June to October, full time, at least 500 hours  (credits deriving from working ativity during the same period can be recongised as well, if the job is consistent wih the Master's focus)

The programme equips the students with the soft and technical skills needed to make good decisions, delving deep into specialised insights of  different kinds of companies (hospitality, events management, DMCsm digital providers, OTAs, etc.).

The courses are built around active learning, interactions and networking. Industry days and classe, live projects, labs and field activities immerse the students in real world experise.

Each course includes one or more Hands on Lab that give the students the practical tool to be become effective specialists: Experience design, Content management, Contracting, Revenue management, Smart destinations and many more

The Master's curriculum includes 11 courses. Each unit is enriched with Industry classes, team working projects, and at leas 1 Hansìds on Lab:

  1. Basics
  2. Sustainability, protecting and promoting herirtage
  3. Tourism and events management
  4. Marketing and digital marketing for the Travel&Tourism industry
  5. Innovation in the tourism industry: cutting edge technologies and new business models
  6. HR Management for hospitality and events
  7. Financial control for the tourism and events industry
  8. Professional English and public speaking
  9. Legal aspects in tourism and hospitality management
  10. Finance, investments, and business development
  11. Tourism policy and development

Faculty

  • managers and experienced professionals (50%+) of the most important or innovative companies in the industry - they will share their expertise and their vision for the furture of the industry
  • Alumni of Ca' Foscari/CISET Master in Economy and Management of Tourism who are now managers and entrepreneurs holding positions of great responsibility
  • internal faculty: academics as well as experienced practitioners, skilled at combining research with real-life business issues
  • experts from different international universites, selected on the basis of their knowledge of specific aspects of the tourism sector and their filed activity
  • different kinds of companies (hotels, OTAs, events management businesses, DMCs, etc.) and institutions will be presented to the students to help them to better understand the business but also to make informed career decisions

Professors Board

  • Anna Moretti (Director) - Venice School of Management
  • Michele Tamma (Director) - Venice School of Management
  • Francesco Casarin - Venice School of Management
  • Anna Comacchio - Venice School of Management
  • Andrea Ellero - Venice School of Management
  • Chiara Mio - Venice School of Management
  • Federica Montaguti - CISET

Live projects

Live projects - also called Students’ consultancy projects – are one of the most distinctive features of higher education programmes offered at CISET.

Live projects are an active learning experience that allows students to act as consultants for a company, a public body or an institution. The “clients” are actual ones as much as the problem or idea they ask the students to help them with. Students are involved in a real-life situation and they live, and have to  solve, the problems and challenges managers in the Travel&Tourism industry face in their daily activity. The students work on the project in a group and interact continously with their "client", thsu fostering team work, networking and relational skills.

Similar experiences are offered at other programmes, but only a few leading schools in the world integrate and assess fully this kind of activity as a part of the curriculum, especially at a Master’s degree level. CISET is in fact recognised internationally as a best practice for this specific learning experience and has transferred its skills to other universities through different European projects. Some examples of what is a live project and what it can entail are here following.

The students supported the management of the 5 star hotel Radisson Collection Hotel Palazzo Nani in designing a strategy to position theur newly opened restaurant and bar.

Students worked to analyse the competitive environment, define a positioning strategy and the product basic features (menu, atmosphere, etc), but also on the profitability of the restaurant and on creating events to launch and exploit the new outlet..

The aim of this live project was to improve the website and the web marketing for Italianway, a leading company in the property management sector.

More in detail, the company knew that the final decision makers on renting an apartment or a house for the vacation are women, as it happens often in the tourism sector, and therefore satisfying women user is strategic for them.They wanted to improve their website content, layout and usability in order to better answer the need of women users.

The students were called to analyse women as website users and decision makers and the user experience provided by the website, and, on this basis, to propose improvements and content to  add.

Olympics at Cortina - A marketing plan for a Winter Olympics museum

Proposed  by the “Olympic Cortina” association this project asked the students to develop a strategic development plan for an immersive museum dedicated to the 1969 Olympic Games in Cortina D’Ampezzo, in the Dolomites.

The museum aim is to celebrate the ’60 Olympics on the occasion of the Milano Cortina 2026 Games.

The students defined which kind of experience had to be offered to different visitors targets, how to involve the residents in the project and designed the marketing and webmarketing strategy.


Addiopizzo Travel - Developing a responsible tourism business

The students were asked to design a business development plan for a responsible tourism otur operator in Sicily – Addio Pizzo Travel. The main feature of this incoming operator is to select its suppliers (hotels, restaurants, bike rentals, etc.) only among business that refuse to pay protection money to the Sicilian mafia or other criminal organisations.

Six groups of students analsysed different target markets and for each assessed the opportunity to enter and devised a specific communication and placement strategy.


Jumbo tours - Innovative fees for the B2B market

Jumbo tours is an incoming tour operator based in Spain and it manages a series of destinations in Europe as a part of Alpitour group, one of the leading tourist companies in Europe. Jumbo tours asked the students to create ideas to introduce completely new kind of fees, fidelity plans and deals in the European B2B market.

The students’ teams analysed the B2B market in 4 different European countries and the deals and fees proposed by some travel agents, clubs and tour operators in each market. On this basis they used their creativity to formulate fees, discounts, promotional offers that nobody ever heard of.  A particularly challenging task, as the tourism sector has already created many solutions, form dynamic pricing to flash deals, from last minute deals to early booking offers


Digital neuromarketing: the new frontier

A pioneering project on the use of neuromarketing tools to analyse the users experience, it demonstrated how effective techniques such as eye-tracking could be in improving websites usability.

The students learned how to use the tools, identify the right testers and run a neuromarketing test. The project was created in cooperation with Promoservice, a very innovative web agency and applied to improve the websites experience of Safari Crew Tanzania and another tour operator and 2 hotels. This project gave birth to a new company - Neurowebdesing - specifically dedicated to conduct neuromarketing analysis of websites

Creating an AI chatbot for e-commerce

This project was realised by a group of students coming form 4 different countries within a cooperation scheme.

A web agency wanting to develop an innovative e-commerce tool for a restaurant, asked the team to develop the basis of a decision tree for a conversation chatbot that would help the customers of the restaurant to order their food. The restaurant was in fact located by the beach and had the possibility to deliver food to the clients direcly under the beach umbrella, and therefore the conversation bot was strategic for them. Despite not having a computer science backgorund the students managed to build the basic tree, and the results of their project were then integrated in a wider project.  


B&B Hotels: 6 local marketing plans

B&B Hotels is a French hospitality brand that counts more than 770 hotels in 17 countires.

B&B asked the students to develop a marketing plan for 6 of their recently opned hotles in 6 different destinations.

The students team had to analyse the competitive environment, identify and explore opportunities, defines pacakges, prices and deals for the business and leisure customers, and get in touch with potential corporate clients.

Industry days and classes

The Master's programme immerses the students in the world of travel and tourism, allowing them to start to build their network and engage with professionals form the start.


The special guests and activites below are integrated into the curriculum so that the students will be able to see the business in action and gain plenty of hands on experience
 

Industry days

Held mainly during the 4 intensive weeks, the Industry days will give the students a practical experience in managing some specific aspect of tourism, event, hospitality businesses. This learning experience is divided into 2 components: a team classroom activity based on a challenge provided by a tourism organisatiom is followed by on-location immersion at the said organisation where the students' teams will  deliver and discuss a presentation to management that addresses the problem and opportunities outlined in the challenge proposed.

Professional Master classes

Professional Master classes are an essential part of the curriculum as more than 50% of the Master's faculty is composed by professionals. The specific feature of thsi porgramme is that professionals are not only presenting their business and role, but will share with the students  knowldge and skills specific to better understand a topic or act on a problem. Students will learn about revenue management form revenue managers, about sales from sales managers, about social media management by tourism influencers and social media managers, and so on. A unique opporunity to learn directly from the practitioners.

During the whole classes period, and particualrly during the intensive weeks, the Maste's students will have the chance to develop a personal plan for refining their self confidence and leadership capabilities.  This personal development journey will focus on:

  • improving self awarness (attitude, body language)
  • public speaking skills
  • leadership development

The students will be coached by verbal and non verbal communication experts, but also from  coaching from industry leaders and alumni, who will discuss their personal leadership style.

Two times per month top industry leaders in hospitality, events management, green transition, and digital development for the Travel&Tourism industry, many of whom are our Alumni, will share with the students their career experience and provide insights on industry trends, their business strategies or next evolutions.

The focus of the Special guests lecturs will be demand trends, new emerging markets, cutting edge technogies, climate change impacts and mitigation solutions, new business models.

Last update: 19/06/2024