Why the campus experience is now a balance-sheet issue

Higher education leaders are often reluctant to talk about hospitality because it can sound like a distraction from academics. But the market does not separate these things the way internal governance often does. Prospective students and families experience the campus as a product. Alumni and donors experience it as a brand. Conference delegates, visiting scholars, athletic fans, and community members experience it as a destination. Every one of those audiences reacts to the same underlying signals: clarity, quality, safety, warmth, and energy.

When those signals are strong, they translate into outcomes that boards care about: conversion, retention, engagement, giving, and resilience in downturns. When those signals are weak, the university may compensate through discounting, marketing spend, and reactive capital projects that do not address the root cause. In hospitality, that is what happens when an owner tries to buy demand without fixing the guest experience. The result is a fragile business.

The demographic environment raises the stakes.

A shrinking pool of traditional-age students does not mean every institution declines, but it does mean more institutions will compete for fewer prospects, and those prospects will compare options with sharper expectations. WICHE’s projections are not a temporary blip. They describe a long slope that will reward campuses that can communicate value and deliver confidence.

The financial environment also raises the stakes.

Even when the “1,000 closures” claim is not supported as a closure forecast, the underlying anxiety often points to real vulnerabilities in the sector. Reporting has highlighted that more than 1,110 institutions had student-loan nonpayment rates at or above a threshold that could put federal aid eligibility at risk if poor repayment performance translated into elevated cohort default rates, as summarized in an Investopedia analysis of federal data. That is not the same as a closure count, but it is a reminder that consumer outcomes and institutional cash flow are connected.

And closures are not theoretical. Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 year-end tracking counted at least 15 nonprofit institutions announcing closures that year. That number is not the whole story, but it is enough to push boards and leadership teams to ask harder questions about differentiation, net tuition, cost structure, and the long-term condition of the physical plant.

Against that backdrop, the campus-as-destination concept is not a branding idea. It is a risk-management framework.

Universities are already in the visitor economy

Most universities behave as if they are in the education business and only incidentally in the visitor business. In practice, they are in both.

A campus is often one of the largest collections of public-facing assets in its region: meeting space, cultural venues, athletics, landscapes, dining, retail, and sometimes lodging. It hosts constant “demand events” that look very similar to hospitality demand patterns: peak weekends, shoulder seasons, group business, transient visitors, repeat guests, and high-value segments like donors and executive programs.

The missed opportunity is that many campuses do not manage these elements as a cohesive destination. Wayfinding may be inconsistent. Parking may be hostile. Event operations may vary by department. Dining may be optimized for throughput rather than experience. Visitor arrival may feel improvised. These problems do not just annoy people. They signal a lack of operational excellence, and in a higher education market that runs on trust, that perception is expensive.

Hospitality offers a different mindset. Resorts obsess over first impressions because first impressions influence conversion. They invest in the public realm because social energy drives satisfaction. They treat food and beverage as both experience and economics. They program their spaces because programming creates demand. They measure service because service is brand in action.

Universities do not need to become resorts. They do need to become intentional about the same fundamentals.

What “hospitality” means on a campus, in plain terms

Hospitality is not chandeliers, fancy finishes, or luxury for luxury’s sake. On a campus, hospitality is the ability to deliver a coherent, welcoming experience at scale, day after day, to multiple audiences, while supporting mission and protecting the asset.

In practice, hospitality shows up in the campus journey.

A family arrives for a tour. The parking instruction is clear. The walk to the visitor center is intuitive. The visitor center feels staffed by people who enjoy helping. The campus is legible. The food options feel alive and current. The public spaces have energy. The student ambassador seems proud. The parent feels relief, not friction. The student imagines themselves there.

That is not “amenities.” That is the experience architecture of demand.

For current students, hospitality discipline looks like predictable basics. It means housing that is clean and responsive. It means dining that is varied and reliable. It means public spaces that feel safe and usable. It means mobility that reduces stress. When those basics are strong, retention improves because daily life supports learning rather than exhausting it.

For donors and alumni, hospitality discipline looks like curated moments. It means an arrival experience that communicates stature and confidence. It means spaces that tell the institution’s story. It means events that feel well-run. It means a campus that looks like it is cared for and invested in. That directly affects affinity and giving.

For community members, hospitality discipline looks like welcome and access. It means cultural venues that are truly open. It means programming that invites participation. It means the campus does not feel gated or suspicious. In many communities, that is the difference between town-gown tension and town-gown partnership.

The capital trend: campuses investing like destination owners

You can see the shift in how leading institutions allocate capital. Increasingly, they are funding projects that combine mobility, public realm, visitor experience, and attraction value. These are not isolated buildings. They are destination moves.

Rice University’s $120 million Gateway Project, described by the university as a pedestrian-friendly corridor connecting campus to Rice Village, is an example of campus-to-city connectivity treated as experience strategy, and the project also includes public greenspace and a vision for mixed-use activity that supports a more vibrant edge condition. That is the same logic hospitality developers apply when they invest in walkability and activate a district with reasons to linger.

Clemson’s Nieri Family Alumni and Visitors Center is another example of treating the front door as a conversion asset. Reporting cited more than $50 million invested in a 98,000-square-foot center with event spaces and terraces. A separate design narrative framed the center as a major welcome environment designed to accommodate high volumes of visitors and to elevate the guest experience of arriving on campus. This is classic hospitality thinking: concentrate the welcome function, elevate the first impression, and create flexible event capacity that supports advancement and community engagement.

The University of Houston has similarly used placemaking investment to strengthen campus identity and welcome, describing tens of millions of dollars in renovations around its centennial efforts, including Centennial Plaza and related gateway and landscape enhancements intended to enhance the pedestrian and student experience.

Scripps College’s $40 million Centennial Plaza Project, described as transforming a campus entrance and unifying its arts district with a pedestrian-friendly walkway, is another arrival and coherence investment that reads like destination planning.

Cultural anchors also matter. The University of Iowa’s Stanley Museum of Art, with reported building costs of $50 million, illustrates how an institution can create a public-facing attraction that deepens brand stature and expands reasons to visit.

Mobility investments are increasingly part of this story, because the guest journey begins long before a visitor reaches a plaza. A multimodal transit facility near Virginia Tech was described as supported by a $36 million federal grant and framed as improving safety and traffic conditions while supporting buses and micro-mobility. UC San Diego’s planning around an electric mobility hub similarly ties transportation investment to access and visitor movement, and the university described requesting $25 million in federal funding to proceed with the project in its application materials.

At the far end of scale, the Texas A&M System approved a project described as a $250 million visitor-facing center that also supports experiential learning in hospitality, retail, and food-related disciplines, positioning the facility as a new front door for prospective students and visitors. The significance is not the number. It is the integration of education, hospitality, and visitor strategy into a single capital thesis.

These examples show the same pattern. The institutions investing most intentionally are investing in the parts of campus that behave like hospitality assets: arrival, mobility, public realm, cultural anchors, and visit-worthy nodes.

The experience dividend: how hospitality turns campus investment into measurable returns

Boards should want a disciplined answer to a practical question: how does “hospitality” create real institutional value?

The best way to explain it is to describe the experience dividend as a chain reaction.

When a campus is easy to navigate, welcoming at the front door, and alive in its public spaces, prospective students convert at higher rates. When student life basics are reliable and the social environment supports belonging, retention strengthens. When donors experience a campus that feels confident and cared for, engagement and giving rise. When the community feels welcomed, partnerships deepen and friction declines. When assets like venues, dining, lodging, and public spaces are programmed intelligently, auxiliary revenues become more stable. When auxiliary revenues become more stable, reinvestment is easier. When reinvestment is easier, asset condition improves, and the cycle reinforces itself.

That is the going concern logic of hospitality applied to a campus.

To make this concrete, there are two sets of levers. One set is physical. One set is operational. Universities often focus on the physical because it is visible and fundable. Hospitality insists that the operational system is just as important.

The first of the two bullet-list moments, focused on the physical levers that most directly shape the destination experience.

• Arrival and welcome infrastructure that reduces friction for first-time visitors
• Legible wayfinding and campus circulation that makes movement feel intuitive
• Public realm placemaking, including plazas and shaded outdoor rooms, that creates social energy
• Food and beverage environments designed as social hubs, not just feeding systems
• Cultural and athletic anchors that create repeat visitation and brand presence
• Flexible event spaces that support conferences, alumni weekends, and community programming
• Mobility investments that support safe pedestrian networks and multimodal access

None of these levers require a university to change its mission. They require it to take the experience seriously as a strategic asset.

The operational levers are where many campuses leave value behind. The difference between a campus that feels “fine” and one that feels “great” is often the consistency of operations. Hospitality is the discipline of consistency.
Wayfinding can be a design project, but it is also a maintenance and governance problem. Dining can be renovated, but it is also an hours-of-operation problem and a quality-control problem. Visitor experience can be architected, but it is also a training problem, a staffing problem, and a culture problem.
When universities underperform on these basics, they do not just lose satisfaction. They lose confidence. And confidence is the most underappreciated currency in higher education.

Revenue growth for nonprofits is not a dirty word

University leaders often avoid the word “profit” because they lead 501(c)(3) institutions. But ignoring revenue growth is a category error. Nonprofit institutions still need operating surplus to reinvest. A campus that cannot reinvest loses asset condition. When asset condition erodes, recruitment suffers. When recruitment suffers, discounting rises. When discounting rises, operating margin shrinks further. This is the institutional version of a hotel that stops renovating and then tries to compensate by discounting room rates. It is a slow decline.

The better approach is to treat auxiliary enterprises as professionally managed businesses aligned with mission. Many universities already operate lodging, dining, events, venues, retail, parking, and recreation. The question is not whether these businesses exist. The question is whether they are managed to produce experience quality and net contribution.

A destination mindset also helps universities diversify demand. Resorts do not rely on one segment. They balance leisure, group, and transient. Campuses can do a version of this by balancing student demand with conferences, executive education, summer programs, cultural tourism, and community events, depending on the institution’s context.

There is no one-size-fits-all model.

A rural liberal arts college may focus on summer programming, retreats, and nature-based experiences. A major urban research university may focus on conferences, performance venues, and mixed-use edges. A regional campus may focus on community access, youth programming, and local partnerships. The point is to build a demand strategy that matches assets and market reality.

The risks are real, and the mitigation is governance

Hospitality can backfire when institutions treat it as superficial or purely commercial. Over-commercialization alienates faculty and students. Poor operations can damage reputation. Community backlash can rise if programming feels extractive. Sustainability can be compromised if visitation grows without capacity planning.

The remedy is not caution that leads to paralysis. The remedy is intelligent governance and disciplined design.

The second and final bullet-list moment, focused on guardrails that keep hospitality strategy mission-aligned.

• Anchor every experience investment to mission outcomes like recruitment, retention, experiential learning, and community benefit
• Start with pilot programs that can be tested, measured, and improved before scaling
• Co-design programming with students, staff, and community stakeholders to ensure relevance and legitimacy
• Professionalize operations for visitor-facing assets through training, service standards, and clear accountability
• Measure performance across experience, economics, and equity so success is defined broadly and transparently

When those guardrails are in place, hospitality becomes not a distraction but a delivery mechanism for mission.

A practical roadmap for boards and leadership teams

Most campus leaders know what their “wishlist” is. The question is how to sequence decisions and avoid capital that looks good but does not perform.

A pragmatic roadmap begins with diagnosis. Inventory underutilized assets, not just buildings but seasonal capacity, daypart gaps, and spaces that could host experiences. Identify the high-value guest segments in your context: prospective students, alumni, donors, conference delegates, community visitors, cultural tourists, corporate partners. Then map the journey for each segment and identify friction points that suppress demand or satisfaction.

From there, define a campus destination thesis in plain language. What do you want your campus to be known for as an experience? Walkability and beauty. Arts and culture. Innovation and entrepreneurship. Wellness and nature. Urban integration. Heritage and tradition. The answer should be honest and tied to assets you already have or can credibly build.

Then pilot. Improve the front door experience. Fix wayfinding. Create signature programming that brings visitors in and gives students pride. Test seasonal lodging conversions if market demand exists. Curate dining that feels contemporary and social. Bring operational discipline to events and visitor management.

Only then should large capital investments be scaled, and they should be tied to a clear performance logic. Clemson’s visitor center investment reads as a strategic bet on welcome, engagement, and conversion. Rice’s gateway investment reads as a strategic bet on connectivity, activation, and a more vibrant campus edge. Those projects make sense because they are not isolated. They are part of a destination story.

Where Horwath HTL fits, and the strategic name that matches the work

Many firms can help a university draw a master plan. Fewer can integrate place strategy, hospitality operations, and real estate economics into one advisory lens. Horwath HTL’s specialty in this space is best described as Campus Destination and Experience Strategy, an integrated approach that combines market demand analysis, hospitality planning, real estate feasibility, and operating model design so that campus investments perform both experientially and financially.

This is not theory. Horwath HTL’s published casework includes university engagements that evaluate conference and accommodation components alongside broader feasibility considerations, such as its feasibility study work for TU Dresden University, described by Horwath HTL as involving a science and conference center complete with accommodations. The value of that approach is that it treats visitor-facing assets as part of the going concern rather than as standalone projects.

Closing thought: education is the product, experience is the multiplier

The most important point to keep straight is that hospitality strategy is not about competing with theme parks. It is about building a campus that behaves like a high-performing place. Students do not choose colleges only for coursework.

They choose environments where they believe they will thrive.

Parents do not write checks only for credits. They write checks for confidence. Donors do not give only to buildings. They give to institutions that feel well-led and well-cared-for.

The demographic headwinds that WICHE projects are real. The stress signals across the sector are real, even when the most dramatic closure numbers are misinterpreted. The response that will matter most is not panic. It is professionalism.

Universities that adopt hospitality discipline will not be “less academic.” They will be more investable as institutions, more compelling as destinations, and more resilient as going concerns. They will recruit better, retain better, engage better, and reinvest more consistently. In a decade defined by competition for fewer traditional students and higher expectations from every stakeholder group, that experience dividend may be the difference between slow erosion and durable strength.