Letter from the Editor — April 2024

If your marketing is effective, would you consider it innovative? Is innovative marketing always effective? How can we be so sure?  

Today’s marketers, particularly in hospitality, deserve loads of credit; there is so much to know. The ecosystem of marketing continuously grows, and the opportunities continually evolve. There is so much knowledge needed to sustain and intelligently utilize tools for fluid connection, engagement, dialogue, and conversion. How do we keep marketing initiatives targeted? How do we cut through the vastness of clutter and noise, to reach new audiences and maintain existing ones? Remember, the marketing mindset also involves strategy and language skills that are critical for creative and meaningful outreach which results in two-way communication and engagement.  

“Marketing” may mean certain skills and activities for some brands, and different approaches for others.  The variety of specializations from technological connectivity, back-end CRM and distribution channels, and online marketing efficiencies, to branding, press relations, influencer marketing, anything “Google,” consumer behavior, activations, and large-scale events – well, that’s all “marketing.” There’s digital marketing, and there’s also destination marketing. There’s event marketing, and there’s back-end analytics. There’s VR, AR, and now IM and AI.  I wanted to understand how today’s practitioners who are involved in these various marketing specializations think about their craft and continued innovation. 

This is Part I of the Marketing Innovation edition of the Boston Hospitality Review, and curating these interviews has enabled me to speak with several of my favorite marketing masterminds to think about what constitutes “innovation” in hospitality marketing today.  

Enjoy and get inspired.  

Leora Halpem Lanz
Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs; Faculty Chair of the Graduate Program; Associate Professor of the Practice, Boston University School of Hospitality Administration


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