Arun Upneja
Professor of Innovation & Financial Management, School of Hospitality Administration; Dean, School of Hospitality Administration, 2013–2026
Arun Upneja served as dean of Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration from 2013 to 2026. He is currently on sabbatical and will return to the SHA faculty in Fall 2027. His work focuses on hospitality finance, experience innovation, and the changing role of technology in service organizations.
During his thirteen years as dean, SHA rose from unranked to among the top 25 U.S. hospitality programs in the Shanghai Ranking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, as of 2025. He built the school’s graduate portfolio, including STEM-designated master’s degrees in Hospitality Management and Hospitality Real Estate. The latter is the only specialized graduate real estate program housed within a U.S. hospitality school. He also developed SHA’s real estate curriculum, advisory council, and dedicated endowments.
Upneja established Experience Innovation as a defining focus of the school. The approach integrates business, psychology, communication, operations, and experience design to understand and shape human interactions in ways that produce measurable organizational and societal outcomes.
He founded the Hospitality Leadership Summit and its ICON Award, bringing chief executives and industry leaders to campus. He also created the school’s innovation competitions, which together award nearly $100,000 annually to student ventures: the Hospitality Innovation Competition, the Student Wellbeing Competition, and the Hospitality Real Estate Competition.
To expand the school’s international engagement, Upneja launched the Classroom-to-Classroom initiative, connecting Boston University courses with partner universities in France, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and India through collaborative student projects. In 2021, he created the POC Pathway Program, a national partnership with historically Black colleges and universities and hospitality doctoral programs designed to address the shortage of underrepresented faculty in the field.
He expanded the school’s publishing and thought-leadership platforms, including the Boston Hospitality Review, and hosts Distinguished, a podcast featuring conversations with leaders and innovators from hospitality and related industries.
Before joining Boston University, Upneja was Professor of Hospitality Financial Management and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Pennsylvania State University, where he worked closely with the Schreyer Honors College. He began his professional career in hotel operations at the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai.
Upneja holds a B.S. in Hotel and Restaurant Management, an M.B.A., and a Ph.D. in Accounting from the University of Houston, as well as a B.A. in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Jammu. He received the John Wiley & Sons Lifetime Research Achievement Award in 2007.
His current work examines how artificial intelligence can assume repetitive and administrative tasks in hospitality operations, allowing employees to devote more attention to judgment, relationships, and the human dimensions of service. He continues to bring together industry leaders and academic researchers to explore the future of hospitality and the experience economy.