Stowe Shoemaker, Ph.D.

Dean, The William F. Harrah College of Hospitality
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Stowe Shoemaker (Ph.D., Cornell University) served as Dean of the William F. Harrah College of Hospitality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas from 2013 to 2023. He held the Andrew and Peggy Dean’s Chair from 2020-2023. The College of Hospitality is currently ranked the number one hospitality program in the U.S. and number two in the world.

From 1996 – 2020 Shoemaker served as a member of the executive education faculty at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University where he taught courses in strategy, service operations, strategic pricing, revenue management, strategic marketing, customer loyalty, and consumer behavior.

Shoemaker has published two marketing textbooks: Marketing Leadership in Hospitality and Tourism: Strategies and Tactics for a Competitive Advantage, Marketing Essentials in Hospitality and Tourism: Foundations and Practices, and Hospitable Healthcare: Just What the Patient Ordered! He has published numerous articles and his research has won multiple awards. His Harvard Business School case study on Hilton HHonors has been used by organizations and schools around the world.

Shoemaker has served as an advisor to numerous hospitality service providers over the course of his career including IGT, British Airways, Accor, Hilton, Landry’s, and Hyatt. He has helped game developers test market new casino games (both slots and table games), developed pricing strategies for airlines, hotels, and restaurants, developed programs to measure customer satisfaction, modeled the success and failure of marketing programs, and developed segmentation strategies based on consumer motivations in the gaming, lodging, and restaurant industries.

Shoemaker has applied his knowledge of hospitality to help healthcare professionals improve patient satisfaction. He held a joint appointment at MD Anderson Cancer Center from 2010 to 2012 and worked with Memorial Healthcare Systems, Houston. In Las Vegas, Shoemaker has worked with Mountain View Hospital and is currently introducing hospitality principles to the curriculum of the new UNLV College of Medicine. His research in the healthcare field has appeared in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.