Assignment: (100%)
Team project report based on fieldwork (5000 -5500 words)
T a s k:
In teams of 5 to 6 students, you are required to critically discuss the following aspects with
regards to Cardif as a tourism destination:
1. With reference to underlying theories and academic literature, examine the
destination marketing and management challenges that a historic city like Cardif faces.
2. Identify one research problem with regards to the challenges that you have discussed
and outline the methodological approach adopted to answer the marketing research
problem
3. Provide an analysis of your findings and critically discuss implications
4. Make logical and relevant recommendations for destination marketing and
management in Cardif
5. Write a reflection upon the limitations of your study (up to 500 words). This reflection
section can include your groups reflections on the quality of research and its findings by
critically exploring the limitations of the study.

Assignment 1: Guidelines/ Advice /Ideas:
This project is designed to encourage you to use the theoretical knowledge that you will have
acquired from your lectures in order to critically analyse destination management and marketing
in a specific setting. You will need to refer to the relevant academic literature to create a
backdrop for your study. You will need to consider whether, and how, themes and priorities
identified in the literature form part of the marketing and management strategy for the
destination under study.
You are further required to refer to real-life examples from academic as well as non-academic
sources. This way you can compare and contrast between theory and practice. You can use
relevant historical and statistical information to support your evaluation. You are also encouraged
to seek official policy documents and marketing plans that can offer clues regarding policy
priorities or aims. If deemed appropriate, you can include such sources as evidence in your
Appendix section.
With regards to the specific questions, some further help and
guidance:
Q1: Critically review the literature and identify marketing and managerial challenges
relevant to Cardif as a historic tourism destination. Provide evidence to justify your
claims. Try to team or categorise the challenges that you have identified. Further, think
about ways how to link the discussion on challenges to the next section: the
identification of a research problem. Keep in mind that the discussion on challenges
should lead to the identification of your research problem.
Q2: With regards to your research problem (related to the challenges discussed), you
can approach the subject from the tourists’, residents’ or students’ perspective – not the
DMO perspective!
Important: You need to ensure that your research problem is well-designed, precise and
narrowly focused. This is important to be able to obtain relevant data through primary
research and appropriately analyse data sets. Further, you will need to give a justification
for your choice. In other words: “Why is this research important?”. By answering this
question you will come to explain the theoretical and practical rationale for your research.
Outline and justify why the methodological approach adopted is regarded as most
opportune for the given research problem. You might also allow for some creativity, e.g.
the use of photo/ promotional material elicitation, etc.
Q3: Be critical when analysing your findings and do not forget to discuss the implications
deriving from your analysis.

Q4: All the above should enable you to draw logical and relevant recommendations for
destination marketing and management in Cardif. You might also want to consider
original and innovative ideas (while still logical and relevant to your findings) as part of
your recommendations.
Q 5 : You are required to provide a considered reflection on the limitations of your study. . This
reflection section can include your groups reflections on the quality of research and its
findings by critically exploring the limitations of the study. You are encouraged to reflect
on your experiences, the quality of your research and its findings and outline the
limitations of your study. Hence, you are provided with an opportunity to think about
what you have learned in conducting research by critically exploring its limitations.
You can draw on a number of aspects, e.g.:
o Theoretical framework used
o Research problem
o Approaches to methods (analytical framework)
o Quality of data
o Data analysis and discussion
o Issues of validation and generalisation
Also, you can incorporate thoughts on:
Methodological elements: research paradigms (e.g. how would the incorporation of
information about research paradigms have influenced your approach to methods?)
In addition, you can refer to:
Organisational limitations in terms of inefficient or ineffective team work.
*** Your account has to be supported by academic literature ***
The reflective essay follows the principles of ‘Reflection on Action’. ‘Reflection on
action’ relates to the ability to think back what happened in a previous/ past situation.
Within this process, you consider what happened within a particular situation and what factors
contributed to a particular outcome. In addition, you question whether or not the chosen
actions were appropriate and how a particular situation/action may affect future practice.

Specific Report Requirement s:
Team Working
It is advisable to form your team as early as possible and gather information about Cardif from
an early stage. You will also be given the possibility to ask questions to the guest speakers both
during guest lectures and during the fieldtrip.
Any issues/problems of participation and contribution by team members towards completing the
presentation must be signaled to the module leader at least 5 days in advance of the submission
date. Any complaints after this date will not be entertained.
If you are not in a team by Week 3, the module leader will allocate you to a team. Allocation will
initially be based on those teams with 5 members.
Late Submissions
Late submissions will be subjected to a sliding scale of penalties: Carefully read the relevant
section in your MSc Handbook: ‘Assignment Deadlines’ for detailed information! Please do not
risk getting penalties for late submission – start with your assignment as early as possible.
Word Count / Report Style
The report should be a maximum length of 5000 – 5500 words of text (excluding
appendices, figures, tables and references). You should include the word count on your front
page. T h e re is a p e n a l t y f o r submissions more than 10% ov er this wo rd l im it.
Your answer should be written in r e port s t y l e, word-processed, 1.5 spaced. One inch (about
2.5cm) margins should be left as a minimum to right and left.
You should also aim to be creative and critical in order to produce innovative and
insightful ideas about Cardif in relation to destination management and marketing. Under no
circumstances should you simply copy original material. This is plagiarism. It constitutes a breach
of the Copyright Law and is subject to severe punishment by the University (see Student
Handbook, pp. 43/44).