September 2021 Editors’ Letter

By: Leora Halpern Lanz, ISHC, Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs; Faculty Chair, MMH; and Associate Professor of the Practice, Boston University – School of Hospitality Administration and Mackenzie Miers, SHA ’21, MMH ’22

We are pleased to share Part II of our Digital Marketing edition of the Boston Hospitality Review (BHR). As our Part I demonstrated, 2020-2021 proved to be a watershed period for the discipline of digital marketing, particularly in hospitality. With businesses and services unable to physically connect with customers directly, brands utilized social media, emails, and other electronic media for communication, storytelling, and engagement. What brands also realized is that digital methods became critical for transactions and retail purposes. Businesses large and small quickly learned that social media was also useful for online ordering, sales, and immediate “conversions” regardless of product or service.

The articles included in this edition of our BHR complement the previous discussions of privacy, target marketing, international policies, and learned lessons from online efforts during the pandemic. The articles shared here, a majority of which were composed by graduate students in the Master of Management in Hospitality (MMH) degree program, touch on case studies and examples of how restaurants, destinations, and hotels relied heavily upon their digital outreach to stay relevant throughout these unusual times. We are proud of our graduate students, including those of the ESSEC Business School in Paris, who worked closely with the Boston University MMH authors to research and contribute to this edition. Our partnership with ESSEC is important to us, as is the camaraderie between our faculty and students, and so regardless of native language, the authors worked closely together to present thought leadership and key takeaways.

Digital Marketing is an integral element of the overall marketing concentration that we offer at the School of Hospitality Administration, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The skills learned in the courses, as well as through the research and writings for our BHR, will elevate the job-readiness of our students, for industries including and transcending hospitality.