Letter from the Dean – April 2024
The mission of Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration (BU SHA) is more important now than ever. To educate and prepare the next generation of hospitality innovators, leaders, and advocates is what our industry, our world even, truly needs. The hospitality business and global landscape is still in a period of post-pandemic revolution, and we need to encourage and inspire more young people to pursue the field.
What are young hospitality professionals craving? An opportunity to create and think outside the box, to do things differently and create memorable experiences. To do so, they need to learn from those who have done so before them. What has worked and what hasn’t worked. And why or why not.
With the powerful marketing faculty we have in our program, many of our students, graduate and undergraduate, realize that they need to learn how to market their business, their service, their products, and even themselves. Whether they wish to innovate and market from within an organization, or their own business, learning from those before them helps motivate creativity and ideation, while still embracing the fundamental pillars of marketing in a tourism or hospitality world.
This special edition of The Boston Hospitality Review, assembled and presented by BU SHA Assistant Dean and Associate Professor of the Practice Leora Lanz, focuses on the varying examples and philosophies of innovative hospitality marketing. The featured contributors come from an exciting range of professional backgrounds and disciplines. The common thread? Innovative Hospitality Marketing. It’s expressed from different perspectives, and it is evident that there are commonalities which comprise essentials for effective marketing.
This is Part I in a two-part collection of Q&As with some of hospitality’s top marketing minds. Enjoy their stories and examples and allow them to provide you with an easy-to-read master class of innovative hospitality marketing.
Warmly,
Arun Upneja, Ph.D.
Dean of Boston University School of Hospitality Administration