UNLV President Neal Smatresk and Executive Vice President and Provost John Valery White announce that Stowe Shoemaker has accepted the offer to become the dean of the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration, effective July 1, 2013.
"The Harrah Hotel College, as a top program in the hospitality industry, is poised to take advantage of the transformation of the hospitality industry over the previous decades," White said. "That industry is local and global; interpersonal and corporate; traditional and cutting edged. Shoemaker's diverse experience in hospitality education and in executive education in the hospitality sector give him great insight he can bring to bear to preserve the College's top position while strengthening its capacity in new and changing areas of the fast moving hospitality industry. We are therefore very excited about this appointment."
During his career, Shoemaker has consulted on projects with gaming manufacturers, casinos, hotels, airlines, cruise ships, and major medical centers. He helped game developers test the market for new casino games, developed programs to measure customer satisfaction for casino and hotel firms, and modeled the success and failure of marketing promotions.
In addition to his research in gaming, Shoemaker has worked extensively with University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center on patient satisfaction. He is currently helping write the strategic plan to bring health care tourism to Southern Nevada.
Shoemaker spent the first nine years of his academic career at UNLV and then the last eight years at the University of Houston as associate dean of research for the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management before returning to UNLV in 2012 as a Lincy professor at the Hotel College.
In the classroom, he has taught marketing strategy, revenue management and mathematics of casino games. Shoemaker has an extensive background in pricing, revenue management, and customer loyalty programs. He worked with British Airways on its pricing strategy and trained all of the company's revenue managers. He also worked with Accor, Hilton and Hyatt on their loyalty programs.
"It is an honor to be appointed as the Dean of the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration," Shoemaker said. "I look forward to working with our faculty and staff, our industry partners, students, community members and university leaders, as the college embarks on the future."
Shoemaker earned his Ph.D. in services marketing from Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, a master's of science in hotel restaurant and travel administration from the University of Massachusetts, and his bachelor's of science in business from the University of Vermont. He has been on the executive education faculty at Cornell for 17 years, and has been a visiting scholar Ecole Hotel de Lausanne in Switzerland, and was invited to Harvard Business School for his sabbatical
Shoemaker's research has won numerous awards, and he has published two marketing textbooks: Marketing Leadership in Hospitality and Tourism: Strategies and Tactics for a Competitive Advantage and Marketing Essentials in Hospitality and Tourism: Foundations and Practices.
Shoemaker succeeds Don Snyder, who has served as dean of the Hotel College since July 2010. Snyder will remain with UNLV to lead the UNLVNow stadium project as well as several other major initiatives that will transform the UNLV campus.
"It was a pleasure serving as the dean and I look forward to continuing my commitment toward revitalizing the UNLV campus, " Snyder said. "I am extremely supportive of Stowe's appointment and excited to do everything possible to ensure a smooth transition and help fully integrate Stowe to the community and industry."
The William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration is consistently ranked as one of the country's top two college hospitality programs. Faculty members have written more than 30 textbooks that are used in hospitality programs all over the world. Its research institutes, centers, journals, and data collections make the college a trusted resource for hospitality and gaming information that people and governments draw upon as they research the best policies for state, tribal nations, and countries.
