Dr. Seyhmus Baloglu is professor and Harrah Distinguished Chair at the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration, University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV). Professor Baloglu served as associate dean of research for seven years and as founding director of a research center for five years. He earned a B.S. in hotel administration from Cukurova University, an M.B.A. from Hawaii Pacific University, and a Ph.D. in hospitality marketing from Virginia Tech. He has presented marketing courses and seminars in Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Caribbean. Before joining academia, he held management positions and had diverse background in the industry including restaurants, hotels, resorts and travel agencies. He is a certified hospitality educator (CHE) by the American Lodging Association and certified Total Quality Management (TQM) facilitator.
Professor Baloglu has published extensively in leading hospitality, tourism, and business journals. He received grants and consulting projects to examine tourist destination images and brand development, customer loyalty and loyalty clubs, gambling behavior (social, Internet, and land-based), slot floor performance, consumer behavior via data mining, and green practices and motivations in the hospitality and tourism industry.
Professor Baloglu has consistently been named as one of the significant contributors to the hospitality and tourism literature. His work has been cited extensively across multiple disciplines and fields. He serves on the editorial boards of numerous leading journals. He has presented his work at many national and international conferences, seminars, and symposia, and served as keynote speaker and panel participant for numerous international conferences.
Professor Baloglu is the co-author of best-selling Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism textbook. Other books he has coauthored are Managing and Marketing Tourist Destinations: Strategies to Gain a Competitive Edge and Handbook of Scales in Tourism and Hospitality Research.
Professor Baloglu is the recipient of numerous and prestigious teaching, research, and service awards. He has been named as the recipient of the 2014 John Wiley & Sons Lifetime Research Achievement Award from the International Council on Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education (ICHRIE) and the 2014 UNLV Alumni Association’s Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year. His other major honors include annual research awards from ICHRIE, the Sam and Mary Boyd Distinguished Professor Awards, the Ace Denken Research Award, and the Claudine Williams Distinguished Chair. The undergraduate and graduate student research projects he has chaired or supervised have also received several research awards. In 2017, he was named a Barrick Distinguished Scholar which recognizes UNLV faculty members who have produced a significant amount of high-quality, interdisciplinary research or creative output recognized by scholars and journals within and outside their primary disciplines.