Since Oregon State University - Cascades launched its collaboration with the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration in late 2010, 40 hospitality professionals from Oregon, California and Washington have completed the rigorous three-day executive education programs.

This June, Stowe Shoemaker, a nationally recognized expert in hospitality and tourism marketing, customer loyalty programs, strategic pricing and revenue management, will lead courses in strategic pricing and consumer behavior at the Central Oregon campus of Oregon State University in Bend.  Said Shoemaker, “These courses are critical for hotel and restaurant managers.  You can’t be successful without understanding how customers behave and measure value, and how to price your product for them.”

Strategic Pricing for Hotels and Restaurants will be offered June 13-15, 2011.  Participants will examine with Shoemaker, the key aspects of strategic pricing and develop the skills necessary to price confidently and effectively.  Participants will learn how to use consumer research to determine consumers’ willingness to pay for products, how to improve customer perceptions of value to earn higher prices, how to apply behavioral economics to get customers to gladly pay more, and how to build price positioning maps in Excel.

Customer Attitudes and Behaviors: Understand Your Market will be offered June 16-18, 2011.  The course explores decision steps that hospitality customers go through before and after purchasing a hospitality product.  Participants will understand how consumer’s emotions, personality and memory, as well as their culture, social status and family can influence purchase choices.  Participants will use this knowledge to create market segments and design operations, including a social media component, to influence customers.

Shoemaker teaches in the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration’s Executive Education program and is the Donald Hubbs Distinguished Professor at the University of Houston’s Conrad Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management. He holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University in the School of Hotel Administration.

Dr. Shoemaker has written two textbooks on hospitality marketing: Marketing Leadership in Hospitality and Tourism: Strategies and Tactics for a Competitive Advantage with co-authors: Robert Lewis and Peter Yesawich, and Marketing Essentials in Hospitality and Tourism: Foundations and Practices with Margaret Shaw.  Both are published by Prentice Hall. He is currently working on a third, with a working title of Pricing and Revenue Management in the Service Industry.

Since 2010, Cornell executive education courses at OSU-Cascades have been led by Cornell faculty including Rob Kwortnik, Lisa Klein Pearo and Bruce Tracey.

Courses are limited in size and early registration is encouraged.  Participants will overnight in hotel properties nearby in downtown Bend.

Discover more about the Cornell Hotel School executive education offerings at OSU-Cascades.  Visit http://www.osucascades.edu/cornellexecprogram/home  or contact Heidi Berkman at 541-480-8700.