Welcome to the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management!
Department of Hospitality Management, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka was established along with the Faculty of Management Studies in 1996. This was the first time in Sri Lanka a degree in the field of Hospitality Management was introduced.
There had been a two-year Hospitality Management Diploma Program initiated by the Affiliated University Colleges (AUC) in the early nineties. With the elevation of the AUC to the level of University, the Diploma Program was elevated to the level of a 03-year degree program namely ‘B.Sc. (Hospitality Management) Special’ under a new Department of Hospitality Management, which was also established along with the Faculty of Management Studies in 1996. This was the first time in Sri Lanka a degree in the field of Hospitality Management was introduced. Falling in line with the faculty decision, the Department of Hospitality Management was renamed as the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management and the degree was renamed as ‘B.Sc. (Tourism and Hospitality Management) Special Degree’ in 2004, with the aim of improving knowledge, developing skills and inculcating positive attitudes, values, and strategic perspectives essential to take leadership roles in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry. Thereafter, according to the faculty policy, the curricular of the degree program was revised in 2009 in accordance with UGC circular No. 901. Introduction of three one-month ongoing internship programs in the curricular was one of the major improvements in this particular curriculum revision. The curriculum revision 2015 was mainly based on SLQF 2015 guidelines and directions in which a new structure was used to allocate the notional hours to each course unit. Moreover, incorporation of timely significant courses also was done in this revision by giving a certain level of importance to event management as a new trend in tourism and hospitality sector.
Moreover, the Latest Curriculum revisions were carried out in 2019 to align the degree program with the updated SLQF Level 6 version and stakeholder requirements. Hence, the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management revised the B.Sc. (Tourism and Hospitality Management) Special Degree to cope with current developments in the tourism and hospitality industry field to produce specialized tourism and hospitality graduates. As organizations become increasingly global, Tourism and Hospitality graduates need to recognize the relationships among the various aspects of best practices. Therefore, the revised curriculum is designed to produce a scholar distinguished by their professionalism, adaptability, resilience, leadership skills rich with critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making, and ability to collaborate and communicate effectively. In addition to that, the name of the previous degree program has been changed to Bachelor of Science Honours in Tourism and Hospitality Management Degree with an improved curriculum in several aspects such as aligning with the latest SLQF guidelines and requirements, incorporating timely needed course units with the requirements of the industry, to abide with the faculty policy of revising the curriculum once in five years, to abide with the recommendations of Quality Assurance and Accreditation Council (QAAC) of University Grant Commission (UGC), etc.