Leora Lanz

Leora Halpern Lanz, ISHC has been an active leader and participant in the field of hospitality marketing since 1985 and has always been at the forefront of strategic marketing and communications. In addition to her teaching and administrative responsibilities at the School of Hospitality Administration at BU, Leora serves as faculty advisor to the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity and participates in the Faculty Advisory Council for Hillel.  

Prior to joining SHA in 2015, Leora served as principal of 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 included hospitality management and ownership companies, consulting firms and advisory services, regional investment conferences around the globe, and a lodging brand owners association. 

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.  

A member of the International Society of Hospitality Consultants (ISHC) and the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI), Leora is a member of the Hotelier’s Guild Academy of Hospitality Arts and is a member of the  Americas Advisory Board for HSMAI.  Leora was named one of the Top 100 Powerful Leaders of Hospitality in the US in 2022 by the International Hospitality Institute (IHI)). The IHI also named her one of the Top 25 Influential Hospitality Educators for 2021 and appointed her as one of its five Educational Advisory Board Members. In February 2017, HSMAI’s national leadership awarded Leora as one of the Top 25 Extraordinary Minds of Hospitality Sales & Marketing. She was also honored as Professor of the Year for 2016-2017 by the students of Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration.  

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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Meet Professor Leora Lanz