HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee—STR has named Amanda Hite as its new president. Hite succeeds Mark V. Lomanno, who was promoted to CEO of the company. Former CEO and founder Randy Smith has been named chairman.
Hite has been with STR for five years; she most recently was Chief Strategy Officer. In her new role she will be responsible
|
| Amanda Hite, president of STR |
for the day-to-day operations of STR and its family of companies: HotelNewsNow.com, based in Cleveland, Ohio; RRC Associates, based in Boulder, Colorado; STR Analytics, based in Boulder; and STR Global, based in London, United Kingdom.
Lomanno served as president of STR for the past 12 years. As CEO, he will focus on the strategic opportunities facing the industry and STR.
Smith and Lomanno said the transition at the top is a natural progression for the hotel data benchmarking company in its 26th year.
“These moves open the next phase of growth for the company,” said Smith, who with his wife, Carolyn, founded STR in 1985. “Now that we’ve become a mature company, it’s time to move to the next level of opportunity.”
“Amanda is very good at thinking strategically and has been instrumental in STR’s growth in recent years,” said Lomanno.
|
| Mark Lomanno, CEO of STR |
“In addition, she is well respected throughout our organization and possesses the necessary leadership and organizational skills required to manage STR in this ever-changing environment.
“We think there are many more growth opportunities and it makes sense to have someone like Amanda in the best possible position to help facilitate those opportunities,” he added.
Prior to joining STR, Hite was the Director of Research for the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. A graduate of Birmingham-Southern College with a B.S. in Business Administration, Hite resides in Hendersonville, Tennessee, with her husband and two children.
“I’m very excited about this great opportunity to lead a pre-eminent company and work with the great team within STR and its family of companies,” Hite said. “I look forward to moving ahead the platform, tradition and leadership position of the company built by the Smiths and Mark Lomanno.”
About STR
STR (www.str.com) provides clients—including hotel operators, developers, financiers, analysts and suppliers to the hotel industry—access to hotel research with regular and custom reports covering North America, Mexico and Caribbean. STR provides a single source of global hotel data covering daily and monthly performance data, forecasts, annual profitability, pipeline and census information. STR founded the STR family of companies and is proudly associated with STR Global, RRC Associates, STR Analytics, and HotelNewsNow.com. STR also founded the Hotel Data Conference (www.Hoteldataconference.com), which will be held 3-4 August 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Media Contacts:
Jeff Higley
VP, Digital Media & Communications
jeff@str.com
+1 (615) 824-8664 ext. 3318
Rachael Spann Urie
Communications Coordinator
rurie@str.com
+1 (615) 824-8664 ext. 3305