Lorna Walker
Programme Director
MA (Cantab), MSc, MBA, PGCHE
Lorna Walker is the Programme Director for the MA
Business Management in International Travel &
Tourism.
Lorna explains the rationale behind the programme and her own
experience of postgraduate education for travel and tourism
professionals.
I am very excited about the new MA Business Management in
International Travel & Tourism. My background is in travel and
tourism and I wish that something like this had existed when I was
working in the industry.
Ten years ago I was a marketing manager in a large travel
company. I was looking for a qualification to help me develop my
career – I felt confident in my marketing knowledge but wanted
build on my understanding of other areas of the business and
of the travel industry as a whole.
Looking around, I could not find anything that met my needs
as a manager in the travel and tourism industry. All of the
programmes I looked at were too focused on people wanting to enter
the industry or working in it at a fairly junior level, or were
general management qualifications with no tailored industry
element.
Additionally, all of the part time programmes on the market
would have required me to take time off work during the week –
something neither I, nor my employer, could afford.
In the end, I completed a generic management qualification
supported by my employer. The experience, knowledge and skills I
gained have been extremely valuable to me during my career but the
programme would have been more valuable had it been tailored to the
particular needs of the travel and tourism industry.
Ten years later my career has taken a different track and I’m
working as an academic. Looking around, I see that the travel and
tourism education gap that existed ten years ago is still there
now. That’s the gap that Regent’s Business School London fills with
this new programme.
I feel it truly does offer something new to the market of travel
and tourism qualifications, a programme specifically designed for
the particular needs of managers within the travel industry. A
programme which acknowledges in its foundations that travel and
tourism really is distinct from other industries – there’s nothing
else quite like it.
Page last updated 1/19/2012