Master in Hotel Business Management
- October 2026
- 14 months
- Spanish
- Full Time
The Master's in Hotel Business Management prepares professionals to manage hotels and hospitality businesses in a global, competitive and rapidly transforming industry. You will gain a 360° view of the business, covering financial management, operational planning, experience design, revenue management, international marketing, talent management and innovation applied to the sector.
Through a practical methodology based on real-life case studies, Learning Journeys, masterclasses and visits to companies in the sector, you will develop the management skills needed to oversee reception, reservations, food and beverage, housekeeping, maintenance, sales and revenue management. You will learn to identify trends in the global tourism market and translate them into strategies that improve efficiency, sustainability and the customer experience.
Upon completing the programme, you will be prepared to work as a Hotel Director, Food & Beverage Manager, Revenue Manager, Front Office Manager, Head Housekeeper, Commercial Director or Hospitality Consultant, or to manage operational departments in national and international hotel chains and restaurant businesses.
Tourism Management
The start of a new journey
In the international landscape, tourism accounted for approximately 10.4% of the global GDP—about $9.2 trillion—and 10.6% (around 334 million) of all jobs before the pandemic.
Today, we find ourselves again in a thriving sector full of opportunities and with an infinite capacity for reinvention. It is precisely within this context that the partnership between Ostelea - Tourism Management School and EAE Business School Barcelona was born.
This strategic alliance aims to combine the social, economic, and cultural development of the tourism industry with the knowledge necessary to supply the international tourism market with innovative and sustainable business solutions.
Is This Master's Programme Right for You?
The Master's in Hotel Business Management is designed for those who want to move from managing a department to running an entire hotel, and who understand that this requires a solid grasp of financial management, operations and the customer experience. It is ideal for professionals looking to:
- Analyse international tourism markets and anticipate competitors' moves.
- Identify risks and adapt management practices to different cultural contexts.
- Lead multicultural and multidisciplinary teams with a global perspective.
- Design innovative and sustainable business policies for hotels and international chains.
- Develop strategic and financial plans that drive growth in the hotel business.
- Make strategic decisions that have a measurable impact on the organisation's value creation.
Why Study Master in Hotel Business Management?
The Master's in Hotel Management prepares you to manage an entire hotel, not just one department. You will graduate knowing how to interpret a hotel's profit and loss statement, set prices using revenue management principles, decide which channels to use to sell each room, and coordinate reception, housekeeping, food and beverage, and maintenance so that every department works together.
Here are the advantages and benefits you will gain as a professional by completing the programme:
- Move from managing a department to running the business. Stop viewing the hotel as a collection of departments and start understanding it as a profit and loss account.
- Learn how to set prices, not just apply them. Revenue management, forecasting and distribution: the levers that have the greatest impact on a hotel's profit margins.
- Gain hands-on industry experience during the programme. Learning Journeys, visits to hospitality establishments and masterclasses with industry professionals, not just theoretical case studies.
- Graduate with three qualifications. EAE Business School, Ostelea — a school specialising in tourism — and the University of Lleida.
- Connect with Barcelona's tourism ecosystem. One of Europe's most competitive urban markets, where you can build a professional network through direct involvement in the sector.
- Make sustainability and innovation part of your management decisions, reflecting how the industry is increasingly demanding them, rather than treating them as an additional branding exercise.
Why EAE Barcelona?
EAE Barcelona is a business school committed to driving professional growth through executive education connected to the realities of the business world. Our approach combines academic rigour, a global perspective, and a methodology designed to turn learning into real-world impact.
Study Programme
The Master's in Hotel Management and Business Administration is structured into four modules covering market structure and finance, talent management and innovation, strategic and operational management, and international marketing and sales. The programme concludes with a Master's Final Project worth 12 ECTS.
Global Tourism Market Structure - 6 ECTS
- The tourism system and competitiveness
- Tourist attractions
- Tourism industries and the role of the State
- Tourism demand
- Information sources
- Globalisation of the tourism market: geographical expansion and new trends
- International legal and compliance framework adapted to the tourism sector
- The tourism, travel, leisure and MICE landscape
- Digital tools and strategies
- Post-COVID innovations
- Innovation and talent to meet the challenges of the digital age
International Finance - 6 ECTS
- Structure of financial statements
- Financial statement analysis
- Cost analysis
- Budget management
- Investment analysis
Intellectual Capital and Talent Management in Global Contexts - 6 ECTS
- The role of a manager, management by missions, and workforce planning and recruitment
- Performance management and emotional intelligence: a study of personality archetypes
- Stress management
- The 21st-century employment paradigm in tourism
- Staff transformation as a key competitive advantage
- Developing employee engagement: staff retention and engagement
- Managing people at close range: assignments and delegation, and Millennials and subsequent generations
- Job descriptions, interviews and selection
- Performance evaluation and professional development, and incentives
- Best practices in people management (The Ritz-Carlton and Disney case studies)
- Experience design in tourism
- UX methodologies in tourism
- UX economics
- Online complaint and review management
Innovation and Entrepreneurial Mindset - 6 ECTS
- Introduction to the world of innovation and how it works
- Understanding the characteristics of entrepreneurs
- Success factors and productivity of founding teams
Global Management and Planning of Hotel and Restaurant Businesses - 6 ECTS
- Hotel management models and structures (concentration strategies, vertical integration and diversification)
- Business ethics and tourism sustainability
- Growth strategies for hotels and restaurants: expansion and internationalisation (strategic restructuring, mergers and acquisitions)
- Hotel organisation and planning
- Hotel budget management (revenue management)
Operations and Quality Management for International Hotel and Restaurant Businesses - 6 ECTS
- Visits to hotel establishments
- Developing a process map for a hotel business
- SWOT analysis
- Case studies
International Marketing Strategies and Revenue Management for Hotel and Restaurant Businesses - 6 ECTS
- Structure of a Marketing Plan
- The marketing mix: strategies, consumer behaviour, and how to manage Product, Price, Promotion and Sales efficiently
- How to manage the traditional marketing mix efficiently while taking the DIGITAL environment into account: the 4 Cs of digital marketing
- Customer journey design
- Defining a buyer persona
- Conducting a competitive analysis and developing a positioning map
- Identifying strategic insights using the CAME matrix
- Revenue, Pricing, Forecasting and Commercial Distribution
- Marketing applied to tourism case studies
International Commercial Management for Hotel and Restaurant Businesses - 6 ECTS
- Technology applied to distribution
- Growth of tourist destinations
- Distribution models
- Commercial management
12 ECTS
The Master's Final Project is not just the research project required to obtain your Master's degree. It is the opportunity to bring together your academic experience, professional ambitions, personal vision and creativity. It allows you to put everything you have learned into practice and work as part of a team to achieve your goals.
Qualification
Upon completing the programme, you will receive three qualifications with a single enrolment, awarded by EAE Business School Barcelona, Ostelea Tourism Management School and the University of Lleida (UdL). EAE certifies your management training, Ostelea adds its specialisation in tourism and hospitality, and UdL provides university accreditation. The programme comprises 60 ECTS and leads to a Continuing Education Master's degree.
- EAE Business School's Continuing Education Master's Degree in Hotel Business Management
- Ostelea Tourism Management School's Continuing Education Master's Degree in Hotel Business Management
- University of Lleida's (UdL) Continuing Education Master's Degree in Hotel Business Management
Advanced Specializations
The Advanced Specializations available with the Master's in Hotel Business Management are certified complementary training programmes that allow you to personalise your Master's experience and build a learning pathway tailored to your professional goals. Deepen the skills you need to strengthen your professional profile and broaden your perspective beyond hotel management.
Here, you decide how to progress and which skills to develop. Choose between two areas of focus:
Develop the leadership that the digital world demands: leadership that combines technological agility, designs forward-thinking strategies and makes decisions with a positive impact. More than just developing skills, you will adopt the mindset that enables you to lead transformation rather than simply take part in it. It is the step that takes you from being a professional to becoming a recognised leader.
- IA & Machine Learning
- Innovation Strategy
- Project Management & Agile
- Data-Driven Business Analytics
- Emprendimiento
- ESG & Sustainability
Designed to provide in-depth knowledge of strategic areas and strengthen your technical profile. Become a leading professional capable of solving the industry's most complex challenges and making a difference in high-impact projects.
- Digital Business Transformation
- International Markets
- Product Management
- Fintech
- Big Data Tools & Applications
- Business Analytics & Data Science
- DEI Strategy
- Marketing Digital Avanzado
Added value thanks to Mobile World Capital Barcelona
As an Official Talent Hub of MWCapital, your Advanced programmes are delivered with a real focus on Barcelona’s technological and business ecosystem, strengthening your professional visibility and connection with the sector.
EAE Barcelona has received recognitions and distinctions that endorse its reputation, academic quality and commitment to sustainability, these indicators reflect its standing in the education sector and its contribution to developing business education with a positive impact.
merco
Our reputation has been recognised by merco through mercoTALENTO, mercoTALENTO UNIVERSITARIO, mercoRESPONSABILIDAD ESG and mercoEMPRESAS. These reputation monitors assess areas such as the ability to attract talent, perceptions among university students, commitment to sustainability and overall reputational excellence
Times Higher Education (THE)
Times Higher Education is one of the world’s leading references for evaluating higher education institutions. Its rankings recognise academic excellence, teaching quality, research, international outlook and the impact of universities and business schools.
Positive Impact Rating (PIR)
The Positive Impact Rating assesses business schools according to their contribution to society and sustainability, based on feedback from their students. This recognition highlights the institution’s commitment to positive impact, social responsibility and the development of leaders committed to a sustainable future.
Career Opportunities
The Master’s in Hotel Business Management prepares you to develop your professional career in different areas of the tourism and hospitality sector, from management and operations to commercial strategy and revenue management. Discover the career opportunities you can pursue in the future.
Where Do Our Students Work?
Students on EAE Barcelona’s Hotel Management Master’s programme currently work at companies such as Booking, Tripadvisor, Hotelbeds, Cabify, Just Eat and Glovo, leading names in the tourism and service economy sectors. You could be next to take that step!
Faculty
The faculty of the Master’s in Hotel Business Management includes active hotel industry executives who currently manage hotels, oversee distribution for hotel chains or advise tourism destinations, alongside academic faculty specialising in tourism. The former bring insights from decisions made as occupancy levels change week by week; the latter provide the framework for understanding why the market behaves the way it does.
Oleg Lazovski
With a PhD (summa cum laude) in Regional Development and Economic Integration, he has over 25 years of experience in the tourism sector, combining private enterprise, the public sector, and academic research.
A specialist in strategic planning, territorial development, and tourism models, he has worked on international projects in Portugal, Ireland, Mexico, and Colombia.
As a member of the SRSI (Research Society in Ireland) and AECIT (Spanish Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism), he maintains an active connection with the professional and academic ecosystem of the sector, integrating into the program an up-to-date perspective focused on the real challenges of the hotel industry.
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Gaspar Berbel Giménez
Accredited part-time Associate Professor with 20 years of teaching experience.
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Oriol Catalán Casanova
Full-time Assistant Professor with more than 15 years of teaching experience.
Student Support
The Hotel Management programme combines classes with visits to operating hotels, sessions with active industry executives and group work on real-life case studies. This is complemented by supervision throughout the Master's Final Project and support from the Career Development Center after graduation. Fourteen months of support at every stage.
Admissions process
Requirements
General admission regulations and procedures
The regulations and procedures governing admission to UdL master's programmes are detailed in the following link:
More information
Admission criteria and procedures for the programme
The general admission requirements and procedures for this University Master's degree are established in the Regulations on access, admission, and enrolment for university master's programmes at the EAE Barcelona University Centre:
More information
Criteria for credit recognition and transfer
The regulations and procedures governing the recognition and transfer of credits for UdL master's programmes are detailed in the following link:
More information
Financial Aid and Scholarships
At EAE Business School, we believe in talent and want to help you achieve your goals. That is why we offer different types of scholarships for students who demonstrate excellence, leadership, and commitment.
Frequently Asked Questions about the Master’s in Hotel Business Management
The programme lasts fourteen months and is delivered full time at the EAE Barcelona campus, in Spanish. It is longer than a standard ten-month Master’s programme because it includes Learning Journeys, visits to operating hotels and a 12 ECTS Master's Final Project.
The programme covers the structure of the global tourism market, finance and cost control, talent management, innovation, the strategic and operational management of hotels, international marketing, revenue management and commercial distribution. In other words, all the areas for which a hotel director is responsible.
It is the discipline that determines the price of each room, the sales channel and how far in advance it is sold, based on demand forecasts. It is one of the main levers for increasing a hotel’s profit margin because it affects revenue without increasing operating costs. In this Master’s programme, it is covered in both the Strategic Management and Marketing and Commercialisation modules.
It opens the door to management positions in hotel chains and independent establishments, including Hotel Director, Operations Manager, Revenue Manager, Hotel Division Manager and Commercial Director, as well as roles in hotel consultancy and international tourism organisations.
A Master’s in Tourism usually focuses on the destination: territorial planning, promotion and resource management. A Master’s in Hotel Management focuses on the business: the profit and loss account of an establishment or chain, its operations and its commercial activities. If your goal is to manage a hotel, the latter is the relevant option.
A triple qualification consisting of a Continuing Education Master’s degree awarded by EAE Business School, Ostelea – Tourism Management School and the University of Lleida.
No previous experience is required. The Master’s programme is open both to professionals already working in the hotel or restaurant industry who want to move into management, and to graduates from other fields who want to enter the sector. The syllabus starts with the structure of the tourism market, so previous industry experience is not assumed.
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