You work in the marketing department of EcoVista Tours, a UK-based company that prides itself on delivering environmentally sustainable travel. As part of your role, you are asked to lead a new package travel to Australia

Module Assignment Brief

BTM0BEA Business and Ethical Awareness in Tourism Industry Workplace

Programme:

Business & Tourism Management

Level:

Foundation

Module Title:

Business and Ethical Awareness in Tourism Industry Workplace

Module code:

BTM0BEA

Module leader/s:

 

Assignment No:

1

Assignment Type:

Reflective Writing

Assignment weighting %:

100%

Assignment Word Count: (or equivalent)

1500 words

Penalties

All penalties that are listed at the end of this document in the Table of Penalties.

Submission Due Dates and Times (Monday 01 September 2025: 2.00 pm)

Summative Link

BTM0BEA_JAN25: Reflective Writing – First Submission Inbox | Global Banking School

Late Submission

Monday, 01 September to Wednesday 03 September 2025 BTM0BEA_JAN25: Reflective Writing – Late Submission Inbox | Global Banking School

Resubmission 1

BTM0BEA_JAN25: Reflective Writing – Resubmission 1 Inbox | Global

Banking School

Resubmission 2

N/A

Grade & Feedback release Dates

All Grade and Feeback release dates are 21 days after the submission date. If an assignment deadline is Monday 1st 2:00pm then the grade release date will be Monday 22nd 2:00pm

This assignment has been designed to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate your achievement of the following module learning outcomes:

Module Outcome 1

To use relevant industry documentation to demonstrate an understanding of the ethics and professional principles that govern the tourism industry

Module Outcome 2

To produce actionable strategies that demonstrate the commitment to ensuring compliance with industry standards

Module Outcome 3

To reflect and identify personal development goals and apply these to the tourism industry.

Assignment Requirements

Overview

You work in the marketing department of EcoVista Tours, a UK-based company that prides itself on delivering environmentally sustainable travel. As part of your role, you are asked to lead a new package travel to Australia where the Great Barrier Reef has suffered extensive damage from the widespread coral bleaching. Use the case scenario to prepare your assignment.

Based on this scenario, prepare a CPD plan that will identify your current awareness and skills in workplace ethical practices in the tourism industry. Describe where you aspire to be in five years in the future. You will create an action plan with three goals that will bring you closer to your aspirations; identify three skills, knowledge and experience you will need to fulfil each goal, and state specific activities you will undertake that will help satisfy each need.

Assignment task/s to be completed

Case: The Great Barrier Reef in Australia suffered significant damage in early 2024. There was widespread coral bleaching, which impacted both biodiversity and local tourism. Reports reveal that over 40% of individual corals in protected southern areas bleached due to heat stress early in 2024, with many succumbing to a flesh-eating  disease. Bleaching crises cause dissatisfaction among tourists and anxiety among tourism operators which could deter future bookings and loss of revenue if widely reported in the news. The reef supports roughly 64,000 jobs and contributes about A$6.4 billion annually to Australia’s economy. As an employee of a tourism operator in the UK, your company is set to launch their well-publicized packaged travel deal to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia not minding the current situation. Your manager insists on fast-tracking the programme to meet seasonal demands and offers you a chance to supervise the launch in-country—an opportunity that would significantly boost your profile. When you raise your concerns, she acknowledges them but argues that “the promotion has cost us money” and suggests that “being too idealistic could ruin business and partnership deals.” This is your first permanent job in a very long time, and you plan to grow in it. Given the situation, you are left torn: Should you comply with the launch, raise the issue more formally, or even refuse to participate altogether?

News Source:

The Guardian. (2024). ‘Tourists ask a lot of questions’: Great Barrier Reef guides face up to bleaching tragedy. The Guardian, 22 March. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/22/tourists-great-barrier-reef- bleaching [Accessed 06 June 2025].

Skift. (2024). Ecotourism Amid a Bleaching Calamity in the Great Barrier Reef. Skift, 22 April. Available at: https://skift.com [Accessed 10 June 2025].

The tasks involved will be to:

  • Identify the ethical issues in the above case and link this to UNWTO Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, ABTA’s Code of Conduct/Tourism Principles (Tourism for Good).
  • Describe your feelings if your work demand is conflicting with your moral standard.
  • Discuss at least three skills or knowledge you would need to address the ethical situation in the case scenario.

To cover all the required aspects of the reflective writing assignment thoroughly, the assignment is divided into sections with the word limit for each section. This can be found in the assignment guide document.

 

 

Additional Information required to support completing the tasks above

  1. This Assignment will be anonymously marked. No Front Sheet is to be submitted or student name or student ID is to appear anywhere in your assignment submission as it will be anonymously marked.
  2. This Assignment will have assignments selected for a random VIVA.
  3. The assignment breakdown provides a structured approach to the reflective essay assignment, ensuring that each section is adequately covered within the 1500-word limit. Adjustments have been made based on the specific requirements of the assignment and the depth of analysis needed for each section.
  4. Supporting materials to read more on studies on ethical dilemmas in the tourism workplace and to create the CPD plan can be found in your Moodle under Teaching Material.
  5. The reflective writing will be saved as Word Document and submitted as a Word document file on Moodle.

Mandatory Referencing and Research Requirements

Referencing Style

CCCU Harvard Referencing Style.

Mandatory Sources to be included in the Assignment

Crane, J., Matten, D., Glozer, S., and Spence, L. (2019) Business Ethics

(5th Edition). New York: Oxford University Press.

Jamal, T. (2019) Justice and Ethics in Tourism. Oxon: Routledge.

Nelson, J. S. and Stout, L. A. (2022) Business Ethics. What everyone needs to know. New York: Oxford University Press.

Page, S. J. (2020) Tourism: A Modern Synthesis (5th Edition). London: Routledge.

Rosamund, T. M. (2015) Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility: Cambridge-Gourlay-Trinity Lectures, Ethics International Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest- com.uos.idm.oclc.org/lib/ucsl/detail.action?docID=3238452.

Additional Reading

  • Legislation.gov.uk – Employment Act 2022
  • https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/tourism/eu- funding-and-businesses/business-portal/understanding- legislation/regulation-tourism-activity-europe_en
  • ABI Complete https://about.proquest.com/en/products- services/abi_inform_complete/
  • Emerald https://www.emerald.com/insight/
  • Proquest https://www.proquest.com/
  • https://www.abta.com/about-us/code-of-conduct
  • https://www.unwto.org/global-code-of-ethics-for-tourism
  • https://www.ibe.org.uk/knowledge-hub/what-is-business- ethics.html
  • https://www.britannica.com/topic/ethics-philosophy
  • https://www.britannica.com/topic/morality
  • https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/factsheets/ethics-role-hr- factsheet/
  • https://www.unwto.org/global-code-of-ethics-for-tourism
  • https://www.abta.com/about-us/code-of-conduct

Format of your submission and how your assignment will be assessed

This assignment should be submitted electronically via Moodle.

Please ensure that your work has been saved in an appropriate file format: only Microsoft Word – No other format will be accepted.

You can submit your work as many times as you like before the submission date. If you do submit your work more than once, your earlier submission will be replaced by the most recent version.

Once you have submitted your work, you will receive a digital receipt as proof of submission, which will be sent to your forwarded e-mail address (provided you have set this up). Please keep this receipt for future reference, along with the original electronic copy of your assignment.

You are reminded of the University’s regulations on academic misconduct, which can be viewed on the University website: Academic Misconduct Policy. In submitting your assignment, you are acknowledged that you have read and understood these regulations.

It is the complete and sole responsibility of the student to upload their assessment to Turnitin for Marking prior to the specified deadline.

Assessment File Name – All Uploads Need to Be Submitted Without Using Any Means of Personal Identification, Student ID or Name.

To avoid uploading issues students should aim to upload their assessment several hours prior to the deadline to avoid Turnitin issues around the deadline time or accidentally submitting to the wrong submission link. It is recommended to check that the assessment that has been uploaded is able to be read after you have uploaded it and if not to re-upload it. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia suffered significant damage in early 2024. There was widespread coral bleaching, which impacted both biodiversity and local tourism.

Contact the SST on your campus if you have any issues.

Students should not request lecturers to submit assessments on their behalf as they are unable to do so.

Any assessment submitted after the specified deadline will incur a late penalty as specified in CCCU Academic regulations unless prior approval has been granted for Exceptional Circumstances.

How Your Assignment Will Be Assessed:

Your work will be assessed on the extent to which it demonstrates your achievement of the stated learning outcomes for this assignment (see above) and against other key criteria like clarity, expression, and awareness, as defined in the University’s institutional grading descriptors. If it is appropriate to the format of your assignment and your subject area, a proportion of your marks will also depend upon your use of academic referencing conventions.

This assignment will be marked according to the grading descriptors for Level 0

The marking scheme and grid for grade descriptors:

  1. Evaluation of process and the quality of information/data developed
  2. Clarity of objectives and focus of work
  3. Expression clarity of expression (including accuracy, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and numeracy)
  4. Awareness – Reflection: this includes ability to confidently evaluates own strengths and weaknesses and the criteria by which such judgement is made.

Submission Requirements

Submission Platform

This assignment should be submitted electronically using Moodle to the Module Submission link

Submission Date &Time

All submission & resubmission dates and time are as stated at the beginning of this Assignment brief.

You should submit your Assignment for all deadlines earlier than 2:00pm on the date stated.

Late submissions can be accepted for Summative Submissions only up to a maximum of 2 working days after the submission deadline. This does not apply to resubmission deadlines. A 10 mark deduction will be made by CCCU for all late submissions.

Work submitted more than two working days after the deadline will not be accepted and will be recorded as a non-submission.

Assignments submitted to the Resubmissions deadlines will be capped at 40% by CCCU.

If you are affected by events which are unexpected, outside your control and short-term in nature (i.e. lasting one to two weeks), under the exceptional circumstances procedure you may be eligible for:

  • A seven-day extension to your coursework (via self-certification request).
  • A 14-day extension to your coursework (via evidence-based request).
  • To defer your exam or time-constrained assessment if you have not yet submitted/attempted it (via self-certification or evidence-based request).
  • To re-take an exam/time-constrained assessment, if you feel your performance on your first attempt was negatively impacted (via impaired performance request).

Please note students are only eligible to have a maximum of 2 self-certification requests per academic year.

You can make a self-certification request up to 14 calendar days before your deadline:

  • or coursework it must be no later than 2pm on the deadline date
  • for exams and time-constrained assessments, the request must be submitted no later than the start time of the assessment.

Table of Penalties

Issue with the Assignment

Penalty to be Applied

Suspected Academic Misconduct or Breach of Academic integrity

The Assignment will be graded zero. Written feedback will be ‘This assignment has been identified as potential Academic Misconduct/Breach of Academic Integrity. You will be invited to a meeting to discuss’.

You will be invited to a meeting with an academic Misconduct reviewer. When you attend the meeting if Academic Misconduct or the breach of Academic Integrity is upheld you will be asked to rewrite the section of the assignment it applies to and re- submit the assignment.

Do not upload any assignments to the AMC submission links before the meeting otherwise it will be removed.

Failure to attend the meeting means the assignment will remain graded at zero and you will be unable to pass the module until you have attended the meeting.

The assignment is more than 10% over the prescribed wordcount i.e. for 3,000 words, if 3,400 is submitted excluding the cover page, table of contents, references and appendices.

A 10-mark deduction applied to the overall grade that is manually entered by the Lecturer. This deduction is capped at 40%, which means an assignment cannot get less than 40% if a deduction has to be made.

For example, if the mark for the assignment was 60. The lecturer would deduct 10 marks and the mark will be 50. Written feedback will also state ‘This assignment is 10% over the wordcount and 10 marks have been deducted’.

Where assignments are more than 10% less than the prescribed wordcount and lecturers cannot identify if the learning outcomes have been met.

This assignment will be graded below 40.

Where a student submits a .pdf instead of a word document.

This assignment will be graded a Fail. The lecturer will grade as 1 and the written feedback will state ‘This is a pdf submission and is not allowed. All submissions should be in Microsoft Word format’.

Students not working in their groups as agreed by the lecturer.

This assignment will be graded a Fail.

The lecturer will grade as 1 and the written feedback will state ‘This submission was not completed in the designated group’.

Please note: Where a student has asked the lecturer to move from their original group and the lecturer has agreed this does not apply.

For a presentation assignment that requires oral delivery, and the student does not present in person.

The Oral rubric criteria is not moved, and the oral criteria will remain at zero.

For a presentation assignment and the student does not upload a converted PPT To Word File with speaker notes.

The communication rubric criteria is not moved, and the communication criteria will remain at zero.

For a presentation assignment that requires oral delivery, and the student did not present on the day or upload the presentation to a Word document with speaker

This assignment will be graded a Fail.

The lecturer will grade as 1 and the written feedback will state

‘There was no Oral presentation in class and the submission was not converted to Microsoft Word’.

Notes.

 

For a presentation assignment the student uploads a file that contains no slides and is simply continuous text.

This assignment will be graded a Fail.

The lecturer will grade as 1 and the written feedback will state

‘There are no slides present in the assignment submission’.

If the assignment is group work and the resubmission is not changed to individual work.

If a group assignment is failed then the resubmitted work must be changed by a minimum of 25% to make it an individual piece of work.

This means if a Group Presentation is 12 slides a minimum of 3 must be different to the group submission. If the assignment is a Group Poster with 6 text boxes then a minimum of 2 of them must be different to the Group Poster.

This assignment will be graded a Fail.

The lecturer will grade as 1 and the written feedback will state ‘This resubmission should be individual and a minimum of 25% of the assignment has not changed’.

Where a written assignment has text that is unable to be read by Turnitin because it is either a graphical image (excluding Presentations & Posters); for example, a screenshot or the assignment is written within text boxes on each page.

This assignment will be graded 0 and the written feedback should state ‘This assignment is unreadable by Turnitin and cannot be checked for Academic Misconduct. It has been referred for an AMC meeting’.

The assignment will then be referred for Academic Misconduct investigation.

An assignment that does not make use of any Mandatory references provided in the assignment brief/Module Handbook.

The reference rubric criteria is not moved and that criteria will remain at zero

An assignment has a reference list, but no citations.

The reference rubric criteria is not moved and that criteria will remain at zero.

Written feedback should state ’The reference criteria has been graded Zero as no citations have been used. Please include citations in your assignment to support the academic points being made’.

An assignment has no citations and no reference list.

Foundation & Level 4 – The reference rubric criteria is not moved and that criteria will remain at zero. The written feedback will state ‘Please ensure that you use citations and references to support your assignment submission’.

At Level 5 and Level 6 this would be graded as a Fail. The lecturer will grade as 1 and written feedback will also show ‘This assignment has no citations and no reference list’.

Where False references are included in an assignment.

This will be referred for Academic Misconduct.

This assignment will be graded 0 and the written feedback should state ‘This assignment contains false references and has been referred for Academic Misconduct. You will be invited to attend an Academic Misconduct meeting’.

Assignment is submitted after the Late Deadline or if it is a Resubmission, after the Resubmission deadline

This assignment will be graded a Fail.

The lecturer will grade as 1 and written feedback should state `This assignment was submitted after the deadline. Please resubmit at the next resubmission opportunity.`

Generative AI

CCCU and GBS have provided guidance on how students can use Generative AI to support their knowledge and education. Please see the link below that provides further guidance on the topic and also includes some case studies that students should familiarise themselves with.

Welcome to your generative AI guidance – Canterbury Christ Church University

GenAI has a broad range of uses and a student may use GenAI tools for:

  • Time management
  • Planning an assignment
  • Generating ideas for a topic
  • Learning new concepts (check key facts with reputable sources)
  • Developing critical writing skills such as editing and proofreading
  • Self-directed study assistance
  • Creating revision materials.

Students may NOT use GenAI applications as indicated below

The use of an artificial intelligence tool/source/programme/platform, such as ChatGPT or any other GenAI software, to generate material which is submitted as if it is the student’s own work without clear referencing is not permitted.

Generative AI should not be used to produce the original text required in summative assessments. This includes:

  • The summary and analysis of peer reviewed literature.
  • The summary and analysis of original data.
  • The synthesis of ideas, discussion or conclusions.
  • The generation of new findings or creation of graphs, charts or images.

English Proficiency and the use of GenAI.

Students can make use of a spelling and grammar checker to correct misspelled words and to correct grammatical errors. However, if the GenAI offers to rewrite sentences or create sentences this may be seen as an unacceptable use of GenAI.

Students must understand the sentences created including the overall meaning as well as the meaning of specific words

Student Integrity and Academic Misconduct

The values of student integrity expected by GBS and CCCU are:

  • Honesty – being clear about what is your work and where your ideas come from other sources.
  • Trust – others can have faith in you being open about your work and acknowledging others’ work.
  • Fairness – you do not try to gain an unfair advantage in using others’ work.
  • Responsibility – you take an active role in applying the principle of Academic Integrity to your work.
  • Respect – you show respect for the work of others.

Peer-support:

Students might choose to get support from their peers when preparing assessments, such as discussing the subject of the assessment, exchanging ideas, and receiving suggestions for improving the work. This is peer- support, and the GBS accepts this as a reasonable expectation when completing assessments. However, peers must not make any changes to anyone’s assessments as such actions could lead to allegations of academic misconduct.

Use of English as the medium of assessment

Students cannot write an assessment in another language and subsequently translate their work into English or have it translated by any form of third-party. Use of translation software or third-party translators is a form of academic misconduct.

Proofreading:

Students can make use of Microsoft Word’s grammar and spell-checking functions but the use of Grammarly is not allowed as it uses AI text generation. If student’s use third-party proofreaders, these cannot make any changes that alter the assessment in anyway including correcting language or citation format errors. Third- party alterations to the assessment are a form of academic misconduct.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism can be defined as incorporating another person’s material from books, journals, the internet, another student’s work, or any other source into assessment material without acknowledgement. It includes:

  • Using exactly the same words (sentences, phrases or even expressions not in everyday use, invented or created by an author to explain an idea) as used originally
  • Rephrasing by making slight adjustments
  • Paraphrasing in a way which may deceive the reader as to the source.
  • Plagiarism in whatever form it takes is form of academic misconduct.

Collusion:

If students submit work for assessment that is falsely presented as the student’s own work but was jointly written with somebody else; this is a form of academic misconduct.

Duplication/Self-Plagiarism:

The inclusion in assessments of a significant amount of identical or substantially similar material to that already submitted for assessment by the student and graded for the same course or any other course or module at GBS or elsewhere is classed as self-plagiarism. It does not include a resubmission of the same piece of work allowed by the examiners in an improved or revised form for reassessment purposes. Self- plagiarism is a form of academic misconduct.

Further clarification of the above can be found in CCCU’s Academic Misconduct documents below

  1. CCCU Student Academic Misconduct Procedures can found below: Please click the link to Open. https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/asset-library/policy-zone/Student-Academic-Misconduct-Procedures-staff- students.pdf
  2. CCCU Student Academic Integrity Policy can be found below: Please click the link to Open. https://www.canter

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