Leora Lanz

Leora Halpern Lanz, ISHC is Associate Professor of the Practice, teaching the locally-revered senior Experiential Marketing course (formerly called Advanced Strategic Marketing) and the graduate level Hospitality Digital Marketing Strategies class. She has been an active leader and presence in the field of hospitality marketing throughout her continued career. Since joining the School of Hospitality Administration (SHA) in January 2015, she has served for five years as Faculty Chair of the Graduate Program and for three years as Academic Assistant Dean. She is now charged with spearheading and developing the school’s online master’s program.  In addition to her teaching and administrative responsibilities at SHA, Leora serves as faculty advisor to the Boston University Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity and participates in the Faculty Advisory Council for BU Hillel.

Prior to joining SHA, Leora formed LHL Communications, assisting hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions and destinations with branding and marketing strategies and solutions, including media relations, digital and social media advisory, and online reputation management, including: development of internal and external position statements; content creation and story-telling for audience engagement and connections; media training, and “branding” and “solutions” sales training. Her clients include hospitality management and ownership companies, consulting firms and advisory services, regional investment conferences around the globe, a lodging brand owners association, and experts in a variety of hospitality-adjacent services.

For 15 years, Leora served as Global Director of Marketing & Communications for HVS, a leading international hospitality consulting and services firm. She was responsible for overseeing the internal and external marketing communications for the organization’s multitude of offices, services, conferences, and articles and research. She directed the firm’s global business teams for marketing and communications, graphic standards, internal communications, social media, conference branding and the Market Connections annual event. She also managed and edited the firm’s weekly newsletter, the Global Hospitality Report and was the company’s primary media contact.

Simultaneously, Leora directed HVS’s Sales & Marketing division, working directly with a myriad of hotel owners, properties and companies, hospitality-related services, and other entertainment and recreational venues. Leora and her team of experienced marketing communications specialists provided strategic planning, innovative sales training and action planning, social media marketing and publicity, and big-picture branding consultancy.

Prior to joining HVS, she worked for nearly ten years as Director of Public Relations & Advertising for the ITT Sheraton Hotels of New York and for five years as Director of Public Relations for the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau (now Meet Boston). With ITT Sheraton, she ran the public relations and advertising operations for six hotels and played a significant public relations role for the hotels during the 1992 Democratic National Convention, and for numerous hotel openings since that time. While in Boston, she spearheaded the citywide promotion of the Monet exhibition and was invited by the Japan National Tourist Organization to teach destination marketing to tourism officials there.

In November 2019, she was named one of the “18 Women Paving the Way in Hospitality” by Lodging magazine; in early 2020 she was nominated as a Massachusetts Lodging Association Business Partner of the Year; and in 2010 Hospitality Marketing Executive of the Year by the Big Apple (Greater New York) chapter of HSMAI.

Leora earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a master’s from Boston University, writing her master’s thesis on hotel crisis communications. Over the years, she has written for dozens of industry publications including BU SHA’s Boston Hospitality Review.

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