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Seyhmus Baloglu is a professor and Harrah Distinguished Chair in the William F. Harrah College Hotel Administration. He holds an MBA from Hawaii Pacific University and a Ph.D. in hospitality marketing from Virginia Tech University. He is a certified hospitality educator (CHE) by American Lodging Association and certified Total Quality Management facilitator.

His teaching areas include hospitality and tourism marketing, international travel and tourism, research methods, structural equation modeling, text analysis, and multivariate statistics. He also teaches research methods in the Executive Masters of Hospitality Administration online program. His research interests and scholarly activities revolve around branding and image development, customer loyalty, online marketing, gaming analysis, slot floor analysis, experiential marketing, sustainability, and customer behavior and sentiment models via data mining and  text mining. Baloglu received grants, contracts, and consulting projects on these and other topics from tourist destinations, hotels, gaming resorts, airports, nightclubs, and supply chain organizations.

Baloglu has published numerous refereed articles, conference proceedings, and book chapters. His work has consistently appeared in top quality journals in interrelated fields including Journal of Business Research, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, and Tourism Analysis. He has presented his work at many national and international conferences, seminars, and symposia, and served as keynote speaker and panel participant for multiple international conferences. He is the co-author of the book, Managing and Marketing Tourist Destinations: Strategies to Gain a Competitive Edge.

Baloglu is one of the leading scholars in hospitality and tourism research and has consistently been listed as one of the most frequently cited scholars and significant contributors to the hospitality and tourism literature. His work has been cited extensively across multiple disciplines and fields.  His research credentials have earned him both an international reputation and placement on the editorial boards of more than ten hospitality and tourism journals.

Combining the academic and practical, Baloglu has a diverse background in the industry, including restaurants, hotels, resort clubs and travel agencies (1985-1991). His last position was as general manager for the lodging division of a tourism company, IKM Ltd., in Turkey. In 1993, he trained the front office team on Total Quality Management (TQM) at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Baloglu is the recipient of numerous and prestigious research, teaching, and service awards. He is the recipient of 2014 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Alumni Association's Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year and the 2014 John Wiley & Sons Lifetime Research Achievement Award from the International Council on Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education (ICHRIE).

Baloglu is the recipient of various best article and paper awards, including the 2012 W. Bradford Wiley Memorial Best Research Paper of the Year Award given by ICHRIE and the Emerald Management Review Award (multiple times between 1996 and 2002), the Boyd Distinguished Professor Award for Research Excellence at 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ (1999), and the Ace Denken Research Award at 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ (2001). He is the recipient of the Best Teaching Award at Virginia Tech (1994), the Boyd Distinguished Professor Award for Teaching Excellence at 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ (2006), the Boyd Distinguished Professor Award for Service Excellence at 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ (2010), and the Claudine Williams Distinguished Chair (2004-2006).