Hospitality Digital MarketingCornell Certificate Program

Rob Kwortnik, Associate Professor of Services Marketing, joined Cornell’s faculty after earning his Ph.D. in Business Administration from Temple University in 2003. He also earned a B.A. in Journalism from Temple and an MBA from California State University, Northridge. Professor Kwortnik’s research focuses on consumer behavior in service contexts, with special attention to service experience management. He has published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Service Research, The International Journal of Research in Marketing, and the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, among others. He has been honored eight times as a Teacher of the Year by students at the School of Hotel Administration. Prior to his career in academics, Professor Kwortnik held several professional positions in marketing and was a travel industry consultant. He is a recognized expert on the leisure cruise industry.

Bill Carroll is a clinical professor (ret.) at the Nolan School of Hotel Administration. For more than 12 years he taught economics, pricing, and marketing distribution courses at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive-education levels. He holds a B.A. degree in economics from Rutgers, an M.S. in labor studies from the University of Massachusetts, and a Ph.D. in economics from Penn State.

As CEO of Marketing Economics, a consulting firm specializing in travel industry pricing, distribution, yield management, and strategic planning, Dr. Carroll works with a variety of clients, including global distribution systems, hotel service companies, and travel intermediaries. He also works closely with PhoCusWright, Inc., a travel industry research, consulting, and publishing company, and he has written a number of reports and articles, including a report covering the evolution of hotel distribution and its impact on major chains and intermediaries.

For over 25 years, Dr. Carroll held a variety of senior positions in the travel industry. He was the Division Vice President for Global Marketing Planning at Hertz, where he was responsible for global pricing, yield management, marketing information systems, and counter sales. He implemented the first decentralized yield management system in the car rental industry and a comprehensive executive information system (EIS) that gained national recognition. Following Hertz, Dr. Carroll served as the Global Vice President for Reed Elsevier’s Travel Group, which included responsibility for Travel Weekly, the Hotel and Travel Index, the Official Hotel Guide, and the Official Meetings and Facilities Guide. He was also responsible for production and database systems and the migration of information products to electronic distribution.

Prior to his work in the travel industry, Dr. Carroll was an assistant professor of economics at Drew University, where he taught courses in econometrics, public finance, labor, and environmental economics. He also served as a member of the economics staff at AT&T, where he was an expert witness before state regulatory bodies and prepared filings on pricing and forecasting with the Federal Communications Commission.

Dr. Carroll has written numerous academic and popular-press articles on economics and travel industry topics. In addition to his business and academic career, he is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and was a university lacrosse coach for over 10 years.