Skift promotes O’Neill to senior hospitality editor

Sean O’Neill

Travel industry news site Skift is promoting Sean O’Neill to senior hospitality editor overseeing coverage of the global hotel industry.

O’Neill has covered travel tech for Skift for the past six years, including launching a Travel Tech Briefing column and a Travel Startup Funding column that posts every Friday.

“Hotels is one of our most important and core beats,” said Tom Lowry, Skift’s editor-in-chief. “I can’t think of a better journalist to help us take that coverage to the next level. I look forward to working with Sean in this new role at such a critical time in the recovery of hotels and beyond.”

O’Neill, who is based in Washington, D.C., has distinguished himself at Skift for his adept stage work at the company’s live events as a lively and probing moderator with travel executives. O’Neill will play a prominent role when Skift hosts its first Future of Lodging Forum in May.

In his new role, O’Neill will also be working closely with the Daily Lodging Report team. DLR is a twice-daily subscription newsletter that Skift added to its portfolio of verticals in 2021.

Prior to Skift, O’Neill was the editor-in-chief of travel publication Tnooz, a contributor to Lonely Planet, and a travel tech columnist for BBC.com. He is a graduate of Bard College.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.