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201 – TMG Hospitality Campus Crawl: Georgia State University – Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality Administration
Wednesday, 29 April, 2026
In this episode of the Suite Spot podcast, we’re heading to the prestigious Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality Administration at Georgia State University. We sat down with the school’s Director, Dr. Benjamin Lawrence, to go behind the scenes of one of the country’s top hospitality programs. In this video, we explore: How Georgia State is shaping the next generation of industry leaders. The innovative curriculum driving modern hospitality education. Insights into the future of the hospitality profession. Whether you’re a student, a professional, or just passionate about the industry, you won’t want to miss this deep dive into hospitality excellence! Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Ryan Embree here with the Suite Spot for another edition of our TMG Campus Crawl Series. We are here in the heart of downtown Atlanta at Georgia State with Dr. Ben Lawrence, Director of the Day School of Hospitality Administration. Thank you so much for hosting us and being a hospitable guest. Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : Happy to have you down here. Go Panthers! Ryan Embree: Well, we’re excited about this. You know, we’re here in Atlanta. We’re gonna talk about the location. But before we get rolling with this episode, Dr. Lawrence, this is your first time on the podcast. We would love to hear. Hospitality is all about collection of stories, right. Of individuals. Share a little bit about your hospitality journey and how you came here to the Georgia State, Day School of Hospitality. Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : So, people sometimes are surprised about my past because I was born in Singapore and I grew up in Indonesia, and I came to the States when I was 18, and I came to the States because I wanted to go to the best hotel school in the world. And so, when I was 17, I went to one of those high school, like, what are you gonna be when you grow up? And this Swiss hotelier said, you wanna go to hotel school? Go to Cornell. So, I applied to Cornell and I arrived in the States when I was 18, and I went to Cornell. And so, I went to hotel school there met my wife at, she was a hotelier at Cornell. After I graduated, we ran an inn in upstate New York, historic inn, went back to get my MBA, then worked, in a couple of different industries for a while. Went back to Indonesia to help my family and their business, and then came back to the States. Then I worked in a community college, a couple of community colleges, teaching hospitality. Then I went back and got my PhD at Boston University and my PhD, focus was in franchising. And I know we’ll talk a little more about franchising in a minute. But, franchising is the primary form of distribution of our product. After I graduated from Boston University, I got a job back at Cornell. So I went back there and I was a food and beverage professor. People always laugh. What was your professor? Food and Beverage? So I taught the most of the freshman students at Cornell, Food and Beverage Management. And I also taught, a multi unit franchising course there. And then this position at Georgia State opened up and a benefactor of ours gave money for an inapt professor in franchising. And there’s nothing better as an academic to get inapt professorship in the area that you study. And the weather in Atlanta is a lot better than the weather in Ithaca. Ryan Embree: I don’t know this week my, uh, my… Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : True. We’ve been cold, but it’s gonna be 80 degrees. 80 degrees this weekend. So when my kids moved down here from Ithaca, they were like, oh my Lord, you can play soccer in January, and we have a pool. So, I really loved working here in Atlanta. Georgia State is a very dynamic place. It’s a large state university, so very different from Cornell, but we really transformed the lives of our students here. So I’ve been here, I was here for seven years as a faculty member, and then just last July I became the director of the the Day School of Hospitality. So, we’re working on a lot of interesting stuff here. I’m excited about the position and excited about the potential of Georgia State and Atlanta. Ryan Embree: Yeah. Excited to share it with our audience and your story. Dr. Lawrence is a true indication of what hospitality is international. Right? We say that all the time. Hospitality is the language spoken all over the world. Your journey is certainly a reflection of that across the globe and, and now across the country here. So, share a little bit about the school’s history, Georgia State’s history, and where you think that this program is unique based on maybe others across the country. Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : So Georgia State was founded, the university was founded in 1913 as the kind of nighttime business school of Georgia Tech. And that has evolved over time. We’re a very large university. We are over 50,000 students here. And we’re a very diverse university. So we graduate more African Americans at Georgia State than any other university in the states. So we are a majority minority institution and a research one institution, so an R1 institution. So, we are not only a research powerhouse, but we also transformed the lives of our students. So we are the Day School of Hospitality, was founded in 1973, as a school of Hospitality, and was named in the eighties by the founder of Days Inn, Cecil B Day. So that really ties back into the franchising story, into the entrepreneur story. You had a local Georgian building, a brand that became worldwide brand, which is amazing. We joined the College of Business, and now we’re a school embedded in a business school. So there’s two forms of hospitality programs. There’s hospitality programs like UNLV or University of Houston. They’re standard loan colleges. And then there’s schools like ours that are embedded in a business school. So those are two basic models. There’s advantages and disadvantages to both. One of the advantages that we have is that we are in a college of business that allows our students to take many different courses from marketing department to computer information systems. One of the disadvantages is that we tend to be fairly small. So cost guide programs in business schools tend to be smaller, than standalone colleges. I took over the program in July, and we’re working on our strategic plan right now to grow the school to get more students. Because industry’s always looking for great hospitality students. And also looking to expose hospitality to students in other disciplines. And so if you’re a real estate student, if you’re a finance student, if you’re a student, a psychology student, right? So getting those students among all university students interested in hospitality. And I think that’s, that’s a model in which, will help grow enrollment. Well, only our majors and our minors, but also students just interested in hospitality. Many of our students are working in hospitality, right? They’re working as waiters or they’re working at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. So, they’re exposed to the industry especially being here in Atlanta. Ryan Embree: Even if they’re not in hospitality jobs, you could still be using hospitality skills within those jobs. Which is very important to share because, I think there’s that common misconception of, you think of a hospitality or a hotel worker, you think of all the disadvantages sometimes, right? Of like the holidays, the long hours. It’s a 24 hour business. But at the same time, there’s these different departments, whether it’s accounting, marketing, all the HR, these different avenues within hospitality, that you can be exposed to franchising. And being, which we’re gonna talk about. But one of the things is you look for that strategic plan, I think is a huge advantage, is obviously your location. Right? You’re in the heart of downtown Atlanta. It’s massive headquarters for global brands, sports venues, I mean, state of the art sports venue. You got World Cup coming here this summer. Talk to us about how you’ve used this location to your benefit for the students and prospective students. Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : Yeah. I mean, we have people on campus all the time. We have headquarters for ISG is here. We have, you know, we can walk from our campus to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, state Farm. We have the World Congress Center here, which is one of the largest convention centers at the day school. We don’t really have that many physical facilities. We don’t have a restaurant, we don’t have a hotel, but we don’t need to because we have Atlanta. Right. So that is a huge advantage for us. When we want people to come to campus to speak, they just need to just turn the corner and they’re here. And so we get great speakers to come to campus. Our students are engaged with the local industries here. Atlanta is the capital of franchising in the us Right? So if you think about the brands that we have here, Chick-fil-A, inspire brands, Rourke Capital. Rourke Capital, which is one of the largest private equity companies that owns Inspire and go-to Foods and over 50 franchise brands. And Atlanta’s growing. Right? And so if you’re a student and you come here, you can stay here afterwards, right? So if you’re a student at Cornell and you go to Ithaca, you’re probably not staying in Ithaca, right. Because there’s not much there. People have to get on a plane and they gotta fly to Ithaca to be in class. And so that is a huge advantage for us, right? Absolutely. For universities that are based in cities where people wanna work, that is a huge advantage for us, not only for our students to get internships, but afterwards to be able to live and work with, within the community. Ryan Embree: A hundred percent. And some of the schools and programs that we’ve visited, have laboratories and incubators that they use. Your lab and incubators are right outside these walls, right? So it’s almost like your classroom is the city of Atlanta and, and ’cause so much hospitality is going on every single day in those moments. So, incredible advantage that the students have here and the alumni network, which we’re gonna talk about here in a minute. But, you know, you talked about your, your strong background and franchising and entrepreneurship. Obviously you have a passion there. It’s, it’s kind of your strength and background share with us how you kind of incorporated that into the curriculum, into the day school hospitality. Sure. Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : So when I came here to Georgia State, one of the things that my endow professorship they wanted me to do was basically talk about franchising for students overall. So I teach an undergraduate franchising course. And in that course, even though franchising obviously is central to the distribution of hotels and restaurants, franchising is everywhere. Everything in a strip mall is franchised. And students don’t understand that, right? Students don’t realize that. The other thing that we have here in Georgia State is we have an entrepreneurship innovation center. And so I have a joint appointment with them, and one of my passions is to get entrepreneurship students to think about franchising as one route to entrepreneurship. We have all these headquarters here. Even if you’re not gonna become a franchisee, you might go work for a franchising company Sure. As accountant, as somebody in marketing or in sales. These are large companies. Or you go, might go work for a franchisee. You know, one of the pathways to franchising is ownership. Now that can be difficult for students, and that’s one of the things that we’re gonna be working on in our strategic plan, is figuring out how do we get students in ownership positions, right? So we are a public university that, 40% of our students are Pell Grant eligible. Right? So they don’t come from money. It’s figuring out how we can change the trajectory of our students’ lives and transform their lives is something that is, one of one of our goals and franchising is a wealth creator, right? Some of the wealthiest people I know are franchisees, right? If you own 20 Dunking Donuts, you’re doing pretty well. You probably have a license plate that has donut on it, right? So, I’m very passionate about franchising. Now there’s good franchising and there’s bad franchising, right? So, there are some franchise brands that I don’t suggest students invest in. And part of that is kind of understanding what franchising is about, right? It’s a partnership. So in the class we talk a lot about, you know, these are two options. These are two options for that you might wanna pick as a franchise, which one would you pick? And understanding kind of the owner who owns a franchise brand, what are the parameters of the contract? And exposing students to that pathway. There’s not that many programs in the US that focus on franchising, and there’s very few endowed professorships in franchising. And so one of our goals going forward is to work more on exposing more students to franchising in general. Ryan Embree: It’s such a great opportunity. I mean, I think all of those success stories where franchises were sometimes built from these schools and now are such job creators of what you’re talking about. So to kind of arm your students with that knowledge, whether again, they’re looking to start their own franchise, become a part of a franchise, or work for a franchisee. Incredibly wealth of knowledge there. So really, really cool work that you’re doing there. The school has really deep roots in the business community. You mentioned some of the major brands. How have you seen this kind of fast track students hospitality careers or even like through internships that you’re doing at the on on school? Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : So we, so one of the things we tell students is get internships right away. So, start with doing internships and get into those businesses and start working. ’cause once it’s the best way for them to kind of feel out the company and know if it’s the right fit for them as well as the company filling them out. So we, we have, we have more internship opportunities for our students than we can fulfill, right. Everything from going to the masters or engaging with Mercedes-Benz Stadium or working at State Farm Arena, working local hotels. We could have double the number of students and we still have opportunity for them. I think, you know, Atlanta’s a growing city, right? We’re continually growing. We have a great ecosystem of universities here in Atlanta, not only Georgia State, but Kennesaw State, Georgia Tech, university of Georgia’s not that far away. Georgia Southern. So we have a great ecosystem of universities here, and that helps to kind of feed the need for the businesses, and especially in the hospitality business. Where, we’re building one of the largest entertainment centers here in Atlanta. $5 billion is going to create, create this Centennial Yards, which is this transformation of downtown. So it’s a really exciting place to be. And businesses want our students, our students tend to be the way we describe Georgia State. Students are students with grit. Many of our students are working while they’re going to school.They can’t afford not to work. Luckily in the state of Georgia, we have Hope Scholarship. So most of our students are going, are getting their education covered. And at the day school, we provide a lot of scholarship money. So if you’re a Georgia State Day School student and you don’t get a scholarship, I’m saying, why aren’t you getting a scholarship? You should be applying for one. We have a lot of good, you know, we have Hunter Scholarship for the Hunter family. We have lots of industry partners that understand the benefit of providing our students with scholarship money and offering paid internships that get them, get them engaged and working, in the industry. And we have FIFA coming. So what a great opportunity for students to get a front seat to an amazing event, is to work a FIFA event. Ryan Embree: It’s wonderful advice. And would encourage, students that might be finding this, if you have required internships, would you even I had them when I went to school, get eclectic with it. Like, expose yourself to as many things as possible, because this industry has so much to offer. And this is like a first time glance at what you might wanna do in your career. A lot of the hospitality professionals I’ve talked to have fallen into these types of careers where you could have a fast track of being like, I know exactly what I wanna do. ’cause I had the experience of this internship. So it’s great that you continue to put your, your students in positions like that. And the learning from it will last you here until the end of your career and until their alumni, which we’ll, we’ll talk about, right? Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : And then also study abroad, right. We have two study abroad programs that we do. One is fully funded, so we pay for everything for the students. Unfortunately, location, it was Dubai in Abu Dhabi, so we had to, we’re gonna have to retool that for this year. But we pay for everything for our students to have an experience that is just out of this world. And we also have a European study abroad experience. So I’ll say, you know, the getting, taking advantage of those experiences and trying different things, right. Don’t go to the same company for four years. Try something else. Try something new. And when you’re in Atlanta, you can do that. You don’t have to go anywhere else to go work at State Farm and then figure out like, I wanna go to Mercedes-Benz or gonna work at Inspire Brands. It’s all here. Ryan Embree: It really is. And a lot of, obviously, alumni have come and worked at those organizations. Talk to us about, you know, the alumni network, how you continue and your role to try to foster that. Because if you can show a student, Hey, this is the path you can take and this is where you can get to, and the opportunities that kind of expand and open up to you when you graduate from here it’s a powerful thing and, and powerful way to get people through the doors. Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : Yeah, absolutely. We are a large university, so we have over 300,000 alums. And if you think about it, students who go to Georgia State are probably most likely gonna be living in Atlanta or somewhere else. We’re a large city and we have lots of opportunity. So vicinity wise, you have a lot of alums living in this area. And because we have, we’re such a large school. If you ask someone, do you know anybody from they went to school at Georgia State, probably they did, or they, they got a master’s degree at Georgia State. Or you know, their, their, their sister did. So everyone’s always willing to help too. Right. So this feeling of like, you know, the idea that, you know, you’ve come from a certain background and, and you’ve achieved, graduated from Georgia State. There’s always people willing to help. And I’ll say the hospitality industry is, this is an a industry of opportunity. So there’s people that work, start working in as a waiter and then become CEO of the company. That trajectory happens. It might take some time, but this is an industry that values hard work, grit, personal attention to customer satisfaction. But it’s doable. And so that’s what inspires, that’s what inspires me about Georgia State, is that I can see our students grow over time, and I can see those students in management positions in the future, and that’s gonna change the trajectory of their life. Or they might own a franchise, or they might start a franchise. If you think about a company like Zaxby’s, right? It’s was started by students, you know, it was started at Georgia Southern. And those two founders are now worth billions. So the idea that we can change the life of students and, and we can do that here in Atlanta, is something that I’m really passionate about. Ryan Embree: And, you know, so we kind of spoke to the students now, the hospitality professionals that might be listening to that be open to being a mentor for these younger students. Because, I sit across the table. I had the privilege and honor of sitting across the table for some incredible hospitality leaders. And every single time I ask them about their hospitality journey, there’s typically always a name in there that they attribute a lot of their success as a jumping off point or a starting point for their career. So be on either side of that, right. To be the person that helps someone, or be the person that reach out to someone for help. It’s hospitality. It’s a people serving people industry. That’s why we love it. That’s why we’re in it. So definitely recommend doing that as well. You know, the success of the program has been recognized as Top Hospitality School across the country, multiple accolades. You talked about the research at the top of the episode. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, that what the accolades mean to you and kind of how it’s helped prospective students kind of recognize Georgia State as one of the top hospitality programs. Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : Absolutely. The, you know, one thing is we’ve been around a while, right? So we’ve been around over 50 years, and I think being embedded in a business school helps us as well. Our students have a very strong business background. They have to pass accounting and finance courses. They have that strong kind of analytical background. And then they take their hospitality courses. We have a lot of students that are, we’re known for students with grit. That don’t get their hands dirty and are willing to like, do the, do the operations type jobs. I’ll say that, you know, operations jobs are the foundation of kind of understanding the business, right? You might wanna be a revenue manager, but you don’t really understand what revenue management is about until you work the front desk and understand that business. Absolutely. So, you know, for a long time, we’ve, you know, we’re at a top business school. We’re at a large state university for a long time. We’ve put students into the ecosystem. So when people think about us, they think about those students, and we’re gonna build upon that going forward. So, we we’re working on a strategic plan to kinda strengthen those fundamentals as well as specialize in and expand our portfolio to things like entertainment and sports, which is all about hospitality, right? Absolutely. Because students today, they really passionate about live events and sports and entertainment. And that’s all part of that hospitality ecosystem, right? Hospitality is part of most things we do. It’s like we’re in a service economy. We’re in experience economy. Most of the qualities you learn in a hospitality degree, you can apply in any type of business. So I’m very proud of the fact that we are at, we’re an ACSB accredited school, so we have that business foundation. At the same time we have specialized interest in things that are really important to hospitality. So franchising is one of those that I think we can build upon going forward. Ryan Embree: I mean, you talk about that younger generation loving live events. I mean, look on social media and you also see, them standing in line for food and beverage item. Like that there’s such passion, and that younger generation that they can bring to hospitality and we get the privilege of serving them. So, one of the places where you have a strong alumni presence and even student presence. And the reason we’re here is covering the Hunter Conference 2026 over at the brand new beautiful Signia Hilton, Atlanta. Like I said, a lot of, Georgia State involvement there. Special relationship between the two organizations. Give us some history there and how that’s evolved over the last couple decades. Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : Absolutely. So it’s a very special relationship. We are one of the co-founders of the Hunter Conference, starting in 1989, with less than a hundred people. And now we have 2000 industry professionals coming to Atlanta from one of the largest hospitality real estate conferences, in the U.S. So obviously the Hunters have a scholarship. We have students, our students run the conference, right? So Sarah [Moss] is the Chief of Staff, is one of our former students. Maddie [Thibodeaux] runs a conference, is one of our former students, previously an intern. So we have an internship program, that we run where this year, Heather was the, the intern there, really helps us to get those students start working in, you know, an amazing event and expose those students and all our students have access to the Hunter Conference. So regardless if you’re a real estate student or a finance student, a hospitality student, psychology student, you can access the conference. We also, Mitch Shaw, endowed the Bradshaw Speaker series, in honor of his father. And every year, we have amazing, amazing person from industry come and talk about their life journey. And so Tony Ressler was the speaker this year, transformer of the Centennial Yards, investing in the owner of the Hawks, and exposes our students to those industry professionals. And so I look forward to every year for us to have that event. It’s very special relationship that benefits our students and benefits our faculty. Getting access to that. And it’s less than a mile from here. Right. So we, I can walk from my office down to the Signia Hotel, look at all the development down there, engage our students with amazing content. Ryan Embree: What, what an opportunity for your students to be involved in that event. And, you know, we just talked about the power of mentors, right? And there could be, your mentor is sitting right there. I mean, it, it’s an incredible conference. We have the privilege of covering it over the past couple years. Now, as it enters its new chapter at the Signia, it continues to just grow and grow and really appreciate the relationship that Georgia State has there. And it’s so cool to see those students, we’ve seen students at that conference from, from all over the country, love to see that. Because again, those are those opportunities that we talked about where it’s like, you gotta take advantage of that and you have it less than a mile, you know, away from your campus. Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : Yeah. And the thing is that when you talk about mentors is that, you know, many of our students, their parents, they’re first generation college students. They’re first generation college graduates. Like, I’m a first generation college graduate immigrant to the U.S. Your parents really don’t know how to help you in that. So, especially for our students and other students, they’re first generation graduates, they need those mentors to help them. So they don’t have parents that are working in the corporate environment that are telling them to get this internship. And so I would say, you know, if you’re if you’re opportunity to mentor a student, you can change the trajectory of their lives. And that is gonna pay dividends in the future. There’s nothing more rewarding than looking at a student and seeing their, their change over time and their position in an industry. Ryan Embree: It’s a great segue ’cause we’re gonna give some advice here to a couple exciting chapters and young professionals lives. What advice would you give to hospitality students right now? Because right now, you know, I pose this question by always saying, if I were, going into hospitality, there’s a lot of noise outside of our industry right now about AI and technology taking jobs. And we’ve talked about this where it might kind of be an opportunity for hospitality right now. So what advice would you share with them kind of hearing this? Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : I tell all the marketing students and the finance students, the CIS students come to hospitality. We got jobs. AI is gonna impact our industry, right. But we’re always gonna need that personal touch. We’re always gonna have to have that touch with the customer and have those personal relationships. And so understanding how AI is gonna impact the industry is important. We’re even changing some of our courses to better understand how we can use these tools to improve performance, to improve customer satisfaction, to reduce wait times. But at the end of the day, we’re in a human business, right? We’re about human experiences and people crave human experiences, right? So, you know, the live events, the reason why we love live events is because we live in the digital world a lot. And so this is the, this is I think a turning point for hospitality for us to really become central to people’s lives. Post pandemic, people want to connect with other people. We are in the business of creating amazing experiences. And if we can create American amazing experiences and bring people together, that’s what hospitality is about. So I would tell students, students that are graduating, this is an amazing opportunity for you. Go out there, find a company that you are passionate about and work hard and work in operations, understand the business. This is your opportunity to, people say, I don’t wanna work in operations. I understand the business. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Who knows what’s gonna happen in the future. But I’ll say, we have jobs and we will have jobs in the future. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. And when you said that operations point, I love it. ’cause you’d be surprised how many front desk agents, bellmans, I’ve talked to across the, across the table that are now in corporate America because, but that’s where they had their start, and they attribute a lot of their success to saying, I was on the front line doing these jobs, doing these work. That’s where again, whether it’s a first job, entry-level job or whether it’s an internship can be so formative and foundational for your career. Now, let’s turn our attention to maybe incoming freshmen, right? They got the next four years daunting before they graduate and get out into the, to the world. What advice would you give them coming to Georgia State and the Day Hospitality School? Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : I would say take advantage of that time, right? So these are four years in which you can do anything you want. So have some fun, right. Go to events, post pandemic. You know, we we’re somewhat of a commuter school. We have dorms on campus, but a lot of our students are still living at home. So it may take some effort to get in a car drive downtown and meet up with an industry professional, but that’s where the value is. That’s why you’re in Atlanta, right? That’s where the school is about network. Meeting people, learning about other people, creating that network. And I would say get an internship from day one, look for an internship every year, get an internship. That summertime is a time in which you can invest in yourself. And classes are one thing, but really college is a lot about trying to figure out what you wanna do besides just the classes. Select your classes you want to take, and then engage in clubs and go do study abroad. Both my kids are Georgia State. Were Georgia State students, and go do study abroad. Go do whatever you want. This is a time in your life to explore. And you don’t have a mortgage. You might not have a car. You can do anything you want. And we’re there to support you. If you want an internship in Atlanta and you’re a Georgia State student, we can find you one. So, I mean, that to me is like, just be excited about that time of your life and AI, you know, AI is gonna impact our industry, but it’s not gonna take our jobs. Ryan Embree: And, and raise your hand and volunteer. I mean, this you got the World Cup. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be involved in something in this amazing city. I mean, there was only a select number of cities, Atlanta being one of them. What an opportunity to be involved in an event that is gonna span maybe something you look back on, where people are coming from all over the world, to be here in Atlanta. So I love that advice, especially for those younger freshmen, just starting their journey. Well, so now we’re gonna, now we’re gonna share a little bit about your vision. So as we wrap up today, you talked about the strategic plan. What’s your vision as you look at the second half of the 2020s for the school here? Dr. Benjamin Lawrence : So we’re really focused on broadening, hospitality past hotels and restaurants and focusing on experiences. And so we really want to be the school that drives and understands how people wanna live their lives through experiences. And so focusing on, on entertainment, focusing on sports focusing on live events, focusing on hotels and restaurants. But people go to restaurants for, for different reasons, right? The transactional component of a restaurant, ordering online and Uber, that’s important. But the other side of going to restaurant is celebrating, right? Sure. And engaging with the people. And like, and you gotta understand where you are. Are you providing a transactional type approach where you’re just giving a meal or you are providing an experience. And we feel that the, there’s lots of value in creating those experiences. And so when you think about hospitality as creating memorable experiences, really broadens the perspective. Every time of service is about creating an experience. And so our plan is to focus on experiences generally, and then also to invite students that aren’t hospitality students to understand the business. So, you know, hospitality programs and business schools are never gonna be huge, right? You have other departments, but what we can do is we can get a marketing student say, listen, come to Hunter and you realize that like they may be maybe 20% of people in that pool are marketing people, right? Sales and marketing. Or accounting. So exposing hospitality to a broad set of students to show them the opportunities, right? We have a lot of opportunity for students. The trajectory of those students that are hardworking, that wanna it is, is very steep. And so that is our strategic plan going forward to figure out how do we can expose hospitality generally to the whole university, not just the school of business. And then to focus on being experts in creating memorable experiences. And I’m excited about the future. We’re in Atlanta, we’re at Georgia State. We have so many positive attributes. We’re investing $80 million in our campus downtown. If you haven’t had an opportunity to come downtown Atlanta, let me know. Send me an email, because we are transforming, downtown Atlanta, and it’s a place that people want to work, play, and stay. And, that’s just gonna improve as we invest in Centennial Yards and the stadium complex. Ryan Embree: One of the advice I always received was talking about the investment behind a school. If you see that it’s growing, it’s a growing university, there’s investment into it, it’s a place that you want to be so, certainly reflected here at Georgia State. Those experiences that you talked about so important. I mean, think about when you were in hospitality school, even when I was in hospitality school. Now the, the lanes of hospitality and specialties that you can get your degrees in because it encompasses just so much right now and it continues to grow. And as far as exposing more and more people to hospitality and its opportunities, it’s exactly what we’re here to do on the TMG campus cross. So we are so happy that you had us here and, sat down with us and, and took some time outta your day to do this with us. Dr. Benjamin Lawrence: Thank you so much. You’re doing important work. And go Panthers! Ryan Embree: Alright. Thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time on the SuiteSpot. To join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star reading on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree and we hope you enjoyed your stay.
