PCA and FIU Bring Luxury Marketing to Life in the Second Annual Experiences Program
The premium cigar industry has long operated at the intersection of craft, culture, and commerce — a world where the provenance of a leaf, the skill of a roller, and the atmosphere of a lounge carry as much weight as any balance sheet. Yet for all its richness, the business side of that world has historically relied more on instinct than on structured professional development. That gap is closing. The Premium Cigar Association (PCA) and the Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management at Florida International University (FIU) are proud to announce a new set of graduates of the 2026 Luxury Marketing & Experiences Program — a three-day executive education program that ran September 30 through October 2 at FIU's top-ranked Chaplin School on its Biscayne Bay Campus.
This was no introductory seminar for newcomers curious about the leaf. Now in its second year, the program brought together cigar manufacturers, retailers and industry professionals to examine how luxury brands are built, protected and brought to life. The setting — Miami's Biscayne Bay, a city that serves as a nerve center for the American premium cigar trade — was fitting. And the curriculum that unfolded over those three days demonstrated just how seriously both institutions are taking the task of professionalizing an industry that, at its best, rivals any luxury category in the world.
From Handshake Business to Executive Education
The relationship between the PCA and FIU's Chaplin School did not materialize overnight. It grew from a recognition, shared by PCA leadership, that the premium cigar sector needed to be viewed — and to view itself — through the same strategic lens applied to fine wine, rare spirits, and haute couture. PCA CEO Joshua Habursky said the initiative aims to professionalize the premium cigar industry within the broader hospitality field. That stated ambition has driven every decision behind the program's structure, its faculty, and the roster of speakers who have given it credibility from day one.
When Habursky first announced the partnership ahead of the inaugural 2025 edition, he framed it in terms that were both ambitious and grounded. "This is the first step in what I hope to be a long-standing partnership with the preeminent hospitality school in the world," said Habursky. "Situated in Miami, a hub of the premium cigar industry, FIU Hospitality is the perfect partner to launch this masterclass, which will feature the best of the premium cigar industry. My hope is to eventually offer both online and in-person classes to help professionalize the premium cigar industry and educate people on the niche industry in the larger hospitality sector," Habursky added.
That vision played out in stages. The PCA and FIU launched a one-of-a-kind luxury marketing and experiences executive education program focused on the business of premium cigars. The immersive program provided students with direct insight into the world of luxury branding through the lens of the premium cigar industry and allied luxury sectors, taking place at FIU in Miami from November 19–21, 2025. By the time the second cohort assembled at Biscayne Bay in late September 2026, the program had evolved into something more structured and more expansive, with a refined curriculum and an even heavier roster of industry names standing at the front of the room.
Inside the Curriculum: Eight Modules, One Industry, Countless Lessons
The backbone of the 2026 program was its eight-module curriculum, designed to treat premium cigars not as a niche hobby business, but as a genuine luxury category demanding the same rigorous strategic thinking found in any other high-end consumer goods sector. FIU faculty and leading industry executives taught side by side across eight modules covering strategic storytelling, brand protection and responsible luxury, strategic collaborations, luxury retail and hospitality, product innovation and pairings, market developments and the cigar event ecosystem.
What makes that list of modules significant is what it says about the industry's self-image. Strategic storytelling acknowledges that heritage alone does not sell cigars in 2026 — a brand needs a coherent narrative that can travel across digital channels, retail environments, and live events simultaneously. Brand protection and responsible luxury signals that the industry is grappling seriously with the regulatory pressures that have shaped its marketing constraints for decades. And the inclusion of product innovation and pairings alongside the cigar event ecosystem reflects a marketplace that increasingly sells an experience as much as a stick.
While rooted in premium cigars, the curriculum addressed challenges shared across luxury, hospitality, retail and experience-driven businesses: how to protect authenticity, build meaningful customer relationships and translate heritage into enduring brand value. That cross-industry framing was intentional. Participants were not simply learning how to sell more boxes of Robustos — they were learning how a legacy brand maintains its identity under regulatory siege, how a retail environment becomes a destination rather than a transaction, and how collaborations with adjacent luxury categories expand reach without diluting positioning. These are lessons that apply equally to a bourbon distillery, a bespoke watchmaker, or a single-estate olive oil producer.
The Role of FIU's Chaplin School
FIU's Director of Hospitality Executive Education Dr. Suzanne Bagnera and Chaplin School Dean Dr. Michael Cheng opened the program. Their presence at the outset was not ceremonial — both have been architects of the program from its inception, ensuring that the academic infrastructure behind the curriculum reflects genuinely rigorous standards rather than a polished industry marketing exercise. The Chaplin School's standing in hospitality education gave the program credibility well beyond the cigar trade.
The exclusive executive program connects participants with top marketing minds and industry leaders to uncover how luxury brands craft unforgettable experiences, strategic collaborations, and authentic value — and it is ideal for professionals ready to elevate their brand in the world of high-end hospitality and lifestyle. Within FIU's broader ecosystem, the PCA collaboration is part of a larger institutional commitment to luxury education. The Luxury Business Strategy and Innovation program, offered by the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center at FIU Business, explores the evolving dynamics of the global luxury industry through the lenses of entrepreneurship, brand strategy, innovation and experiential value creation — bridging the gap between global luxury markets and the next generation of thinkers, innovators and leaders. The cigar program feeds naturally into this ecosystem, giving it both a home and a peer community.
What Participants Actually Learn
The program immerses participants in the refined world of luxury marketing through the unique lens of premium cigars — an emblem of craftsmanship, exclusivity, and indulgence. The executive education course goes beyond theory, offering direct access to thought leaders in the premium cigar industry alongside top marketing executives from complementary luxury sectors such as fine wine, craft chocolate, and rare spirits. That cross-pollination of categories matters enormously. A retailer who hears how a fine wine importer approaches the cultivation of a loyal customer base, or how a craft chocolate brand navigates the tension between artisan credibility and mass-market awareness, returns to his humidor with a fundamentally different perspective on his own business.
Through immersive sessions, case studies, and behind-the-scenes insights, participants explore how premium brands create memorable experiences, foster strategic collaborations, and build enduring value in the luxury marketplace. The inclusion of case studies in particular gives the program an applied, practical texture that distinguishes it from the theoretical fare of most MBA modules. The cigar industry has its own set of constraints — regulatory, cultural, and commercial — and learning through real examples drawn from within the category is far more useful than adapting frameworks designed for consumer packaged goods or technology companies.
A Speaker Lineup That Reads Like a Hall of Fame
If the curriculum provides the skeleton of the 2026 program, the speaker lineup provides its muscle. Speakers and panelists included Jonathan Drew (Drew Estate and J. Sann and Son), Ernesto Perez-Carrillo and Lissette Perez-Carrillo (Casa Carrillo), Terence Reilly (Aganorsa Leaf), Oliver Hyams, Gabriel Diaz and Mariana Hinestrosa (Altadis U.S.A.), Josh Roque (Drew Estate), John Gaglio (La Aurora), Marilyn Florez-Giordano (Quality Importers), Luz Holguin (Bartolo Cigars and Wine), and Elad Smadja.
Consider what that roster actually represents. Jonathan Drew built Drew Estate from a Lower East Side startup into one of the most recognized and polarizing — in the best sense — brands in the American cigar market. His story is one of relentless brand identity, aggressive collaboration, and willingness to court a younger consumer that the rest of the industry often ignored. Ernesto Perez-Carrillo is a generational figure in a family-owned business that spans decades of Cuban heritage and American reinvention, having produced back-to-back Cigar of the Year winners for Cigar Aficionado. Lissette Perez-Carrillo has become one of the sharpest retail and brand minds in the industry. Terence Reilly brings the Aganorsa perspective — a Nicaraguan-rooted operation building considerable prestige with serious tobacco. Altadis U.S.A., with its portfolio spanning General Cigar brands and the Romeo y Julieta and Montecristo houses, represents the large-corporation side of the equation. And La Aurora, one of the oldest cigar manufacturers in the Dominican Republic, adds the international heritage dimension.
Having these figures in the same room as manufacturers, retailers, and students — not on a trade show floor, but in a structured academic setting designed for conversation — is the kind of access that money rarely buys and that the program's value proposition rests upon. Over three days, participants engaged in conversations that bridged craftsmanship and commerce, tradition and innovation, culture and experiential design.
The Experiential Dimension: More Than Just Classroom Hours
A luxury marketing program about premium cigars that kept everyone seated in a lecture hall for three days would miss the point entirely. The 2026 edition was designed to be lived as much as studied. The experience allowed participants to explore firsthand the relationship between premium cigars, ritual, luxury hospitality and human connection — an acknowledgment that you cannot teach experiential design without actually engineering an experience.
This experiential philosophy runs deep through the program's conception. The emphasis on multi-sensory experience is central to this first-of-its-kind collaboration between the Premium Cigar Association and Florida International University's Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management. Through its Hospitality Executive Education division, the school launched the Luxury Marketing and Experiences Program as a three-day in-person executive education experience designed to elevate the art of hospitality within the premium cigar sector. The program explores experiential design, curated pairings, luxury consumer psychology and the service principles that shape world-class cigar environments.
That last phrase — "world-class cigar environments" — deserves unpacking. The modern premium cigar lounge is not simply a place to smoke; it is a hospitality concept that competes for leisure time and discretionary spending with craft cocktail bars, private members clubs, and high-end restaurant experiences. The principles that govern those environments — intentional atmosphere, trained staff, curated sensory detail, consistent brand expression — are precisely the principles the program teaches. A retailer who emerges from the program understanding the psychology behind a well-lit humidor, the logic of a curated pairing menu, and the operational discipline behind attentive service is a retailer equipped to compete at a genuinely higher level.
The PCA's Broader Education Strategy
The FIU program does not exist in isolation. It is one component of a significantly expanded PCA educational strategy that has been taking shape over the past year. "Education is the strongest tool we have to protect and advance the premium cigar industry," said PCA CEO Joshua Habursky. "This acquisition reinforces our commitment to making education a core pillar of our mission — expanding PCA's role beyond advocacy into global professional development and certification."
Through its Cigar Academy, the PCA is developing new curricula and expanding its educational activities, and the association is also involved in a luxury marketing course at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami. These two tracks — the Cigar Academy's product- and certification-focused education, and the FIU program's brand-and-business focus — are complementary rather than redundant. One equips a retailer or aficionado with the language of tobacco; the other equips a business owner or executive with the language of luxury marketing strategy.
The PCA is also extending its educational reach internationally. PCA will visit Seoul December 7–10, 2026, to launch The Cigar Academy with Pierre Ltd., bringing premium cigar education and certification to Korea. Internationally, PCA has grown significantly from 6 retail/distributor members to over 50 in a short span of time — less than a year — a result of new programming and a focus on education and international engagement. For the FIU partnership, this global momentum creates a future in which the Luxury Marketing program's graduates are part of a worldwide professional network, not merely a domestic alumni group.
The PCA confirmed plans to collaborate with FIU to launch an online Luxury Hospitality Executive Education Program — a partnership that aims to integrate cigar knowledge into the broader luxury service ecosystem, which could benefit both duty-free and domestic retailers. The implications of an online version are significant: it would democratize access to instruction that, in its current form, requires travel to Miami and three days away from a retail business. A retailer in Tulsa or Bozeman who cannot break away from his shop for a week would gain access to the same frameworks and perspectives that are currently available only to those who can make the in-person commitment.
Why This Partnership Matters to the Industry
It is worth stepping back and asking why a trade association partnering with a hospitality school for a three-day executive program is genuinely significant — and not simply a polished press release event. The answer lies in what the premium cigar industry has historically lacked and what its competitors in the luxury space have long possessed.
Wine has the Court of Master Sommeliers and an entire educational infrastructure that confers prestige, creates career pathways, and establishes credibility with consumers. Spirits have WSET certifications, distillery ambassador programs, and academic curricula embedded in hospitality schools around the world. Even craft coffee has developed a certification infrastructure through the Specialty Coffee Association that has elevated the professional standing of baristas and shop owners alike. Premium cigars, for all their legitimate claims to luxury status, have not historically had an equivalent institutional framework. The PCA-FIU program is a direct and deliberate attempt to build one.
Over three days, participants engaged in conversations that bridged craftsmanship and commerce, tradition and innovation, culture and experiential design. Education proved once again to be the catalyst that unites the industry — nurturing the next generation of leaders who will carry cigar culture forward with authenticity, creativity, and purpose. That framing — education as cultural catalyst — reflects a sophisticated understanding of what professional development actually does for a trade. It does not just teach skills; it builds identity, community, and shared standards.
The course is designed for professionals seeking to elevate their understanding of luxury branding and experiential marketing in today's evolving landscape. Whether in hospitality, lifestyle, retail, or premium goods, the ability to create authentic, high-touch experiences is critical to attracting and retaining discerning customers. By focusing on premium cigars — a symbol of luxury with rich storytelling potential — this course offers a distinctive entry point into the strategies and nuances that drive consumer desire, brand loyalty, and cross-industry partnerships.
Placing Cigars at the Center of the Luxury Conversation
One of the most strategically shrewd aspects of the PCA-FIU collaboration is the way it positions premium cigars not as a peripheral or problematic consumer category, but as a natural anchor for a broader luxury discussion. The executive education course offers direct access to thought leaders in the premium cigar industry alongside top marketing executives from complementary luxury sectors such as fine wine, craft chocolate, and rare spirits. By sitting at the same table as fine wine and rare spirits — categories that enjoy considerably more cultural goodwill in mainstream media — cigar executives are making an implicit argument about their own category's legitimacy.
That argument is strengthened by the choice of FIU as a partner. The Chaplin School is not a regional institution doing a favor to a local trade group. It is a nationally ranked hospitality program with global reach and genuine academic credibility. "This is the first step in what I hope to be a long-standing partnership with the preeminent hospitality school in the world," said Habursky. Habursky's language was deliberate: by associating the premium cigar industry with world-class hospitality education, the PCA is asserting that cigars belong in the same conversation as fine dining, luxury hotels, and ultra-premium travel.
Graduation and What Comes After
Graduates earn a certificate of completion. That credential, issued by FIU's Chaplin School, carries institutional weight that a trade association's internal certification cannot replicate. It places cigar industry professionals on the same footing as hospitality executives who have completed other executive education programs at one of the country's most respected hospitality schools. For a retailer meeting a new vendor, a brand manager pitching a hotel partnership, or a manufacturer seeking a premium distribution agreement, that credential signals a level of business sophistication that goes beyond knowing tobacco.
The first cohort's curiosity, professionalism, and engagement "set a new benchmark for educational excellence in the industry," with graduates described as "the first ambassadors of a new era, carrying forward the values" that the program was built to instill. By the second cohort's graduation, those ambassadors are no longer first — they have predecessors who have returned to their businesses, applied what they learned, and begun to demonstrate through their daily work that this kind of structured development produces measurable results.
Special appreciation goes to Maria Cervantes for exceptional coordination and to PCA CEO Joshua Habursky for his leadership and for co-moderating this historic program with Ricardo Carioni. The operational infrastructure behind such a program — coordinating schedules, logistics, speakers, and student experience across three intensive days — is invisible to participants when it works well, and Cervantes's coordination was clearly a major reason it did.
Looking Ahead: A Growing Institution
The 2026 program was the second iteration. The trajectory it is on suggests that by the time a third or fourth cohort graduates, the PCA-FIU partnership will be recognized not as a novel experiment but as an established institution within the industry's educational landscape. With PCA members already participating in programs ranging from The Around the World in 80 Cigars Book to the Masterclass on Luxury Cigar Marketing at FIU, the association is growing in ways that are attracting other associations and companies outside the premium cigar space — organizations that want to work with PCA because of its ability to quickly develop innovative programs and challenge the status quo. PCA is working on several partnerships in the luxury market to expand public relations for the premium cigar sector.
The broader arc of PCA's strategy is becoming visible. Trade show presence, advocacy work, and political lobbying remain core functions, but they are increasingly accompanied by educational programming that gives the industry a professional identity it can export beyond its own borders. A cigar lounge owner in Nashville who completes the FIU program and returns home is not simply a better-educated retailer — he is a representative of an industry that takes itself seriously enough to invest in rigorous, institutional-grade professional development. That changes conversations with landlords, hotel partners, municipal regulators, and high-spending customers alike.
The premium cigar category is not shrinking. The customers who buy hand-rolled long-fillers are, by virtually every measure, affluent, loyal, and deeply engaged with the lifestyle surrounding the product. What the industry has sometimes lacked is the marketing language and business acumen to translate that engagement into the kind of brand equity that commands premium prices, premium retail environments, and premium cultural standing. The PCA-FIU Luxury Marketing & Experiences Program is, at its core, a direct investment in closing that gap — one cohort of graduates at a time.
