Academic experience
MANM320 Hotel Operation Analysis
This is my favourite module. This module only has about 20 students, and all of the lectors, tutors and guests are professional and owned fantastic industry experiences. The most important task is doing online hotel simulation each week with teammates, which let me has a better understanding of hotel operational KPIs and has a greater passion to take part in group discussions and class competitions.
MANM312 Event Design and Production
This is an interesting module with industry-based assignments. Both assignments and filed trip give us a good chance to understand the event concept better.
MANM441 Tourism Development and Sustainability
This module is academically based. Our lecture is professional and most of the references he used always written by himself, which require us to have a deeper understanding of each reading to finish our assignment.
MANM136 Digital Marketing and Social Media in Tourism
To be honest, I don’t really like this module. We always have different speakers to introduce different topics, which makes the courses not systemic enough. Also, the assignments are not relating to lecture materials.
Personal experience
This is a really good chance for me to explore Europe. In this semester, I’ve almost travelled around the UK and have a better understanding of fantastic Britain cultural. It is only about an hour from Guildford to London, which provided me with a great chance to visit famous attractions or attend seasonal events without paying for expensive hotel fees. I’m really into museums, gallery, architectures in London, so as the London underground culture. I also travelled to other countries during the exchange with my Surrey friends, which include France, Russia, Qatar and Turkey.
Accommodation
I was lived in a brand D student living with five roommates located in Manor Park. It is cost me about 300 dollars each week with private bathroom, shared kitchen and including the bills. The room facilities are good, and it only needs about 15 minutes to the university by bus and about 20 minutes to the town centre. I’m highly recommended to living on-campus, is really valuable and the experiences are just amazing.
Costs
If choosing the student accommodation, the cost of studying at Guildford is almost as studying in Brisbane. There are 24 hours opened Tesco near the university, with reasonable price and good quality. The transportation fees are a little bit higher than Australia, but as the Surrey student, we can have a student discount when we travelled by university bus. I have truly spent a lot on travelling. I almost went to London twice a week, the transport, attraction tickets and dining in London are costly. I’ve spent about $17,000 during the exchange without the tuition fees.
Challenge
It is challenging to find the suitable exchange courses to approved by both UQ and Surrey without any time clash. The program I am studying in UQ is combined tourism, hotel and event, but the Surrey provide each major separately, which include six different programs (International Tourism management, Strategic Tourism Management and Marketing, International Events Management, International Hotel Management, Strategic Hotel Management, and Air Transport Management). Furthermore, most of the master programs in the UK is one year only, which means most of the courses only provided one semester each year. Surrey required me to submit more than 10 courses approved by UQ to avoid the time clash if I choose the courses from different programs. It is stressful, because some of the courses I’ve already studied, and others are not been provide in my exchange semester. So, it is important to adjust the UQ study plan based on Surrey’s courses when you decide to exchange.
Professional Development
As a tourism, hotel and event student, experiences are always essential for me to success. This exchange let me have a better understanding of the UK and Europe culture, history, art, food and daily life. The University of Surrey also provided me with a chance to study with students from four different majors, let me know more future industrial people.
Highlight
The people I met during the exchange make me feel impression. Whatever cooking or having parties with roommates and classmates, or travelling around Europe together, the friendship we made become one of the most important things in the UK.
Top tips
1. A short-term student visa is a good option for one-semester exchange, it is faster and cheaper;
2. Purchasing the Stagecoach student ticket online before you arrive Guildford because it needs time to ship;
3. Giffgaff sim card is a smart choice and it can be shipped to anywhere around the world for free;
4. Using virtual young person card via Railcard app to get discount for UK trains and London underground;
5. Monzo bank is convenient to open an account and don’t need to queue too much time;
6. Purchasing one-day return tickets and London underground zone 1-6 tickets combination through Trainline will be much cheaper;
7. Preparing a Schengen visa before you arrive in the UK if needed;
8. Visit Edinburgh by train can be a good choice.
