Aimbridge Hospitality has filed a lawsuit against Avion Hospitality and its CEO, Robert Burg, alleging the company used confidential Aimbridge information to interfere with its management contracts, costing tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

Aimbridge contends that Burg — formerly Aimbridge’s president and chief operating officer — started his own third-party hotel management company and grew its portfolio by reaching out to then-current Aimbridge employees to provide him with confidential property-level information to help Avion persuade hotel owners to switch management companies. Avion would then reward these employees by hiring them.

Aimbridge filed the petition on June 24 with 471st District Court in Collin County, Texas. Plano-based Aimbridge is the world's largest third-party hotel management company.

Aimbridge Executive Chairman Steve Joyce said a lawsuit is not the preferred approach, but the company had no other choice.

“It became so egregious that this is where we ended up,” he told Hotel News Now in an interview.

Specifically, the suit claims the misappropriation of trade secrets in violation of the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act, tortious interference with an existing contract for the Hyatt Regency Tulsa Downtown, tortious interference with an existing contract for the Windsor Court Hotel and knowingly participating in Aimbridge employees' breaches of duties of loyalty and confidentiality.

Aimbridge seeks a permanent injunction to stop Burg and Avion from further attempts to access and use its confidential information; actual and consequential damages, including profits Avion earned from the use of its Aimbridge’s information; and exemplary damages as determined by a trial, among other forms of monetary relief.

Burg later said in a statement to Hotel News Now that his company will defend itself against the lawsuit. "I am surprised and disappointed by the Aimbridge filing, Burg said in the statement. “I know firsthand that hospitality management is about relationships and results,” he said. “That is not a trade secret.”

Joyce said Aimbridge's team over the past two years started to notice a pattern, as several hotel owners switched their management contracts to Avion, and then several Aimbridge employees left to work at Avion.

He said Aimbridge's leadership investigated by looking at former employees' emails still on its servers and found evidence Burg had asked them to share proprietary, property-level information about specific hotels' performance.

Burg used that information to interfere with Aimbridge’s management agreements to gain contracts, Joyce said. Avion would then hire those employees who provided the information.

“It’s not one, it’s several,” Joyce said. “It’s not like this is a minor issue. It’s tens of millions of dollars.

“It’s just incredibly disappointing to see one of the most trusted folks in the organization violate the very policies that he was responsible for ensuring,” he added.

Aimbridge hired Burg in 2003 to be its senior vice president of operations, as noted in the lawsuit. He was promoted in 2008 to executive vice president and chief operating officer and again in 2018 to president and chief operating officer. At the time, he reported to Dave Johnson, the company’s founder and then chief executive.

Aimbridge restructured its executive leadership after its merger with Interstate Hotels & Resorts in October 2019. Burg was a candidate to be the company’s next CEO, the lawsuit states. After Johnson moved on to become executive chairman in January 2021, Mike Deitemeyer, who was then the global president and formerly Interstate’s president and CEO, was selected to run Aimbridge.

When Burg left Aimbridge, he received a departure package that included a monthslong transition period, a year’s salary and a bonus as severance, the petition states. During that period, he worked for Aimbridge as a senior adviser, and as such retained access to confidential company information. In both his previous roles and the senior adviser role, the petition states Burg affirmed in writing he would not use Aimbridge’s confidential information for personal benefit or the benefit of any entity besides Aimbridge.

Burg would go on to launch Avion Hospitality, a third-party hotel management company, in March 2022, with headquarters in Plano, Texas.

In the petition filed with the court, Aimbridge names seven properties for which it said it has evidence showing that Burg and his company contacted then-employees of Aimbridge to gain access to its property-level performance spreadsheets and STAR reports from CoStar. Those hotels are:

• The Embassy Suites by Hilton College Station.
• The Embassy Suites by Hilton Houston West-Katy.
• The Embassy Suites by Hilton Houston Energy Corridor.
• The Fairfield Inn & Suites Houston East Energy Corridor.
• The Home2 Suites by Hilton Houston Energy Corridor.
• The Hyatt Regency Tulsa Downtown.
• The Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans.

Aimbridge said it lost contracts for these hotels between April 2022 and January 2024. It names other hotels that its suspects were lost due to similar practices, but it does not yet have the evidence to show that.
Once the case moves to the discovery phase, Joyce said Aimbridge expects to find out about more hotels that could be involved. The initial petition is to inform Avion that Aimbridge is aware of what’s going on and to keep its records, he said.

“When we get into discovery, it’s going to get a lot deeper because we’ll get a lot more information than when we started looking,” he said. “We asked for their information and their emails and their texts.”

As far as he is aware, Joyce said no Aimbridge employees came forward about being contacted by Burg or anyone else at Avion. He didn’t want to get into the motives of the individual employees involved as it is complicated. Aimbridge only named Burg and Avion as defendants in its petition, and when asked whether the company was considering legal action against any other employees, Joyce said that while that’s yet to be determined, it’s unlikely.

“Most of these people are working for a living,” he said. “The likelihood is, I doubt we’re going to go after individual employees unless there’s something truly egregious.”

Once the case progresses into discovery and more facts come to light, Aimbridge will adjust its complaint based whatever new information is available, Joyce said.

"What we're after is a cessation of this type of illegal activity," he said. "We want to be compensated for what he's done, and unfortunately, that's going to happen in the course."

Editor's Note: This story was updated on July 1 to include a link to Avion President and CEO Robert Burg's response.

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