Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

  • SHA RE 716: Franchise, Management, & Independents
    The course emphasizes the benefits and limitations of the franchise and management company relationship for hotels and restaurants. It addresses the key elements and financial implications associated with franchise and management agreements. A broad discussion highlighting the brand selection process will provide insight to the value creation. The course will introduce students to the recent trends in soft branding, and what it means to be a boutique and/or independent hotel or restaurant. Students will learn the competitive advantages and disadvantages of being independent. The course will address the restaurant franchise industry including quick serve (QSR), full service (FSR) and fast casual. Students will gain understanding of the value created by the restaurant franchise¿s processes and operations. Other topics will include brand and franchise development and outsourcing.
  • SHA RE 717: Hospitality Real Estate Finance & Feasibility
    This course is designed to facilitate a working knowledge of hospitality properties as financial and real estate assets. Students will learn the hotel market and feasibility research process, to understand how to analyze hotel markets across the world, identify and evaluate key forces that impact the performance of hotel markets and the hotels within them, determine the right hotel product for each site and market and forecast future performance. The course will also provide a grounding in the basic concepts of real estate finance and how they are used by stakeholders to make hospitality investment decisions. The class culminates with the preparation of a feasibility study where the students will conduct a highest-and-best-use analysis, project a ten-year proforma for their hospitality asset, estimate development costs, and then prepare an internal rate of return analysis to determine the financial viability of the asset. Students will also arrive at the estimated market value of the proposed hospitality development using the discounted cash flow and direct capitalization approaches. Students will also create their own financial models in this course and learn how to use them effectively as tools to support critical decision-making.
  • SHA RE 722: Hospitality Design
    This course is designed to introduce students to the principles of facility planning, layout and design for hotel, dining, kitchen, public and service areas. At the completion of the course, students will be able to explain the design process common to all hospitality facilities, as well as the activities that occur during each phase of this process.
  • SHA RE 745: Introduction to the Hospitality Real Estate Lifecycle
    This course is designed to outline the real estate process within the hospitality industry. Coursework will draw a clear distinction between job functions, particularly hotel development, acquisitions, and asset management. Course work will follow the life cycle of a hotel asset, from sourcing a deal to disposition. Students will develop an understanding of financial modeling as well as a baseline knowledge of how macroeconomic trends impact decision making when making hospitality investments.
  • SHA RE 746: Hospitality Real Estate Transactions and Deal Making
    This course will focus on the acquisition and disposition of hospitality assets and examine the multiple stages such as sourcing of potential opportunities, physical, financial, and legal due diligence of the deal, negotiations, raising capital, structuring the deal and final closing. The course will examine this process through the lens of the various stakeholders such as the buyer, seller, investors, and lenders with the use of case studies.
  • SHA RE 747: The Real Estate Stakeholder Simulation
    This capstone course aims to help students understand the goals, incentives, and motivations of the various stakeholders within the real estate industry, such as developers, bankers, equity investors, hotel brands, brokerage firms, and hotel operators, thus enabling them to structure deals and business arrangements more effectively. An exercise concluding the course involves teams taking on the role of the various stakeholders to simulate a transaction.
  • SHA SE 726: Large Venue Management
    Students will learn about the event industry from the perspective of large-scale public assembly venues, including convention centers, sports arenas, stadiums, concert halls, and theaters. This course's content will help students understand how events hosted in public assembly venues are funded/financed from conception to completion. Topics covered include the history of public venues, facility selection and booking, scheduling and coordinating facility operations, crowd management, safety and security, and booking and management. Throughout this course, students will dive into the environment of large-scale events through case studies and examples of invoices, rental agreements, and financial statements to help illustrate the financial realities of operating event venues.
  • SHA SE 727: Mega Events
    Throughout this course, students will dive into the environment of large-scale events. Case studies will primarily focus on highly mediatized Mega-events that reach a global audience, such as the football World Cup, the Olympic Games, and World Expositions. Students will learn about the event industry from the perspective of large-scale public assembly venues, including convention centers, sports arenas, stadiums, concert halls, and theaters. This course's content will help students understand how events hosted in public assembly venues are funded/financed from conception to completion. Topics covered include urban policy, regenerating urban environments, using events to rejuvenate neglected areas, the history of public venues, facility selection, and booking, management decisions such as staffing, scheduling and coordinating facility operations, crowd management, safety and security, and crisis and risk management.