Under the supervision of Feiertag Hospitality and Tourism Management Professor Tom Duetsch, VT undergraduate students were crowned 1st place in the US and ranked second overall internationally in the 2021 Smith Travel Research (STR) Market Study Competition. In the last few years, the STR Market Study Competition has become one of the hallmark student research competitions in hospitality education and has attracted participation from global institutions.  

In the 2021 competition, teams of three to six students, with the assistance of their faculty advisor, selected a market and were provided with a standard set of reports and data by STR. Then, the teams submitted their presentations to be evaluated and scored by seasoned STR speakers. The final stage of the competition was a live 30-minute presentation of findings via Zoom to a panel of senior-level industry judges. As part of the effort preparing for the competition, our student team took a field trip to Richmond, VA in the fall 2021 semester to meet with industry partners in order to better understand the market.

The Feiertag HTM teams have performed very well over the years, particularly since Tom Duetsch took over as the instructor of the Hospitality Market Analysis course, of which the STR competition is the main term project. In the 2020 competition, our students won 1st place overall internationally.  

Please join us in congratulating our 2021 team members Reed Fundter, Simon Grimes, Jack Hadad, Cady Lewis, Justin Louie, Sean Peters, Ethan Pitsenbarger, and Rachel Ryou. The Feiertag HTM Department would also like to thank our industry partners as well as the Advisory Board for contributing to our students’ learning experiences.