About

Atul Sheel is an Associate Professor of Hospitality & Tourism Management at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst. He holds a PhD in Business Administration with a focus on Finance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, along with an MS in Hotel, Restaurant and Travel Administration from the same institution and a BSc from the University of Delhi, India. He has served as a Graduate Program Director for the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management and has been a doctoral student supervisor. His research interests include corporate finance, investments, hospitality investment, economic impact and feasibility studies, hospitality financial management, revenue management, and managerial accounting within the hospitality sector. He has received numerous honors and awards for his scholarly contributions, including the TEACHnology Fellow Award from UMass and recognition for research excellence from ANBAR Electronic Intelligence. His work has been published in various academic journals, focusing on topics such as the financial performance of lodging firms, dividend announcements, and decision-making tools for hoteliers.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Business
• Advertising
• World Wide Web
• Agricultural economics
• Virology
• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Economics
• Geography
• Marketing

Selected publications

• Cross-border tourism in North America: A hybrid deep learning framework with macroeconomic indicators

  Tourism Management · 2025-10-06

  articleOpen access

  This study proposes a hybrid predictive framework designed to forecast border tourism flows among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Combining Fuzzy Markov Chains, Hidden Markov Models, and attention-based deep learning architectures (RNNs, GRUs, and CNNs), the model captures the complex and dynamic interplay between exchange rate volatility and broader macroeconomic conditions over forty years. Results show that tourist behavior is shaped by both current economic indicators and long-term economic memory, with attention mechanisms offering interpretable insights into spending and arrival trends. The SUOS model outperforms traditional forecasting approaches, demonstrating superior accuracy and scalability. Its interpretability also enables stakeholders to understand which economic factors drive tourism demand, supporting practical applications such as seasonal planning, marketing timing, and policy formulation. By bridging macroeconomic modeling with advanced AI, this research offers a robust and adaptive tool for anticipating tourism shifts in an increasingly uncertain global economy.

  PublisherDOI

• Hotel Industry Performance in 2019-2020, COVID-19 Impact, and the JHFM Index

  The Journal of Hospitality Financial Management · 2020 · 5 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Business
  • Virology
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 2019-2020 Restaurant Industry Performance Index

  The Journal of Hospitality Financial Management · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Business
  • Agricultural economics
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hotel Industry Performance in 2018-2019 and the JHFM Index

  Scholarworks (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2019-11-07

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 2018-2019 Restaurant Industry Performance and the JHFM Index

  ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2019-05-10

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Strategic Effect of Degree of Operating Leverage on Value Premium of Lodging Firms

  ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2019-05-10 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The potential association between a firm’s strategic use of its degree of operating leverage (DOL) and its value premium has been a subject of considerable interest and debate among researchers in the past (Carlson, Fisher, & Giammarino, 2004; Garcia-Feijoo & Jorgensen, 2010). Existent finance literature also discusses the trade-off between DOL and degree of financial leverage (DFL) (Dugan & Shriver, 1992; Mandelker & Rhee, 1984). While most researchers focus on cross-sectional research in this area, Huffman (1989) further documented variation in the DOL and DFL across industries. The lodging sector of the hospitality industry is unique in many ways (Lee and Jang, 2007; Madan, 2007; Singal, 2015). This paper evaluates the impact of DOL on the value premium of lodging firms, the trade-off between DOL and DFL in these firms, and how this important lever can be used by manage- ment to make strategic business decisions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hotel Industry Performance in 2017-2018 and the JHFM Index

  ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2018-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Editor's note

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 2017-2018 Restaurant Industry Performance and the JHFM Index

  ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2018-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hotel Industry Performance in 2016–2017 and the JHFM Index

  The Journal of Hospitality Financial Management · 2017-07-03 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The year 2017 has been productive for hotels in the United States. According to the latest Smith Travel Research (STR) report (September 2017), the year-to-date occupancy for these lodging firms in...

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 2016–2017 Restaurant Industry Performance and the <i>JHFM</i> Index

  The Journal of Hospitality Financial Management · 2017-01-02

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michael M. Lefever

  2 shared

• Amit Nagpal

  International Management Institute

  2 shared

• Robert H. Wilson

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2 shared

• Arjun Singh

  2 shared

• Eric Nussbaum

  2 shared

• Gabriel A. Petersen

  2 shared

• Albert L. Wrisley

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  1 shared

• Deepak. Ninan

  1 shared

Labs

• Hospitality & Tourism ManagementPI

Education

• Ph.D., Isenberg School of Management

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  1995

Awards & honors

• TEACHnology Fellow Award - University of Massachusetts (2004…
• Distinguished Teaching Award Nominee (2000-2001)
• Lilly Fellowship Award Nominee (1998-1999)
• National Merit Award from Ministry for Tourism, Government o…
• Michael D. Olsen Research Achievement Award Nominee (2012)