Deja Vu All Over Again

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.

Sheryl E. Kimes is an emeritus Professor of Operations Management at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration. From 2005 to 2006, she served as interim dean of the school, and from 2001 to 2005, she served as the school’s Richard and Monene P. Bradley Director of Graduate Studies. Dr. Kimes specializes in revenue management, restaurant revenue management, and service operations management. She has been named the school’s graduate teacher of the year three times and was awarded a Menschel Distinguished Teaching Fellowship by Cornell University in 2014.

Dr. Kimes’s research interests revolve around revenue management in the restaurant, hotel, and golf industries. She has over 100 articles in leading journals, such as Interfaces, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Service Research, Decision Sciences, and the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly. She was awarded the CHR Award for Industry Relevance in 2010, 2012, and 2014, and she was given a lifetime achievement award by the Production and Operations Management Society in 2010. In addition, Dr. Kimes was given the Vanguard Award for Lifetime Achievement in Revenue Management by the Hotel Sales and Marketing Association International in 2017.

Dr. Kimes has served as a consultant to many hospitality enterprises around the world, including Chevy’s Fresh Mex Restaurants, Walt Disney World Resorts, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, Starwood Asia-Pacific, and Troon Golf. She earned her doctorate in Operations Management in 1987 from the University of Texas at Austin.

Ashwin Kamlani is co-founder and chief executive officer of JUICER, a predictive analytics company that’s introducing dynamic pricing to the restaurant industry. In October 2021 — amidst the rapid rise of third-party delivery companies, menu digitization, technology providers, and inflationary pressures — Mr. Kamlani, along with Drew Patterson and Marco Benvenuti, launched JUICER to help restaurants implement dynamic pricing to increase revenue and profitability.

Prior to JUICER, Mr. Kamlani was founder and CEO of Regatta Travel Solutions, a software company helping smaller hotel groups build successful direct digital strategies and implement technology-driven revenue management tactics. In 2016, Regatta and its innovative hotel reservations software was acquired by Kognitiv. Mr. Kamlani’s hospitality career began in 2003 with Meliá Hotels International, shortly after receiving his Master’s degree in Management in Hospitality (MMH) from Cornell University. He also is an advisory board member of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business’s Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship.