Editor's Note, Feb. 28, 2024: This story has been updated to provide more information.
Craig Smith, previously with Marriott International, will become the next CEO of Aimbridge Hospitality.
Smith will take up the position starting March 18, according to a news release. He retired in February 2023 from Marriott as the group president and managing director, international. Aimbridge’s previous CEO, Mike Deitemeyer, left the company at the end of 2023.
Joining Smith in a leadership role is Steve Joyce, former CEO of Choice Hotels International, as executive chairman effective immediately. Joyce joined Aimbridge’s board in November 2023 when the company announced Deitemeyer’s departure.
Aimbridge’s most recent chairman, Glenn Murphy, will remain on the board. Michael Barnello, managing partner and founder of Badlands Hotel Capital and former president and CEO of LaSalle Hotel Properties, will join the board as well.
New Chief Executive
In an interview with Hotel News Now, Smith said when he steps into the role in March, his first order of business is to listen. While Smith likes to jump in and get right into action, he said the best approach here is to spend the first 30 to 60 days talking to hotel owners and employees at Aimbridge and ask questions.
“I really want to get the feedback,” he said. “You've heard things in the industry of what you need to do, but you really want to get the feedback to be able to say, ‘Here's what I heard from you, and here's where we're going to start this journey.'"
The biggest battle ahead for Aimbridge will be over talent, Smith said. Third-party operators’ selling points are the teams at the properties.
“The No. 1 thing that [owners] want is they want great talent, and that’s where we do well, and that’s where we want to focus even more, continuing to bring in the best talent and keeping them inside our company,” he said.
It’s important to realize a hotel’s general manager is probably the most important job in the company, Smith said. Aimbridge will need to spend its time and energy finding the right managers, training them and making their teams feel empowered.
“Every single hotel is in a different market with different challenges,” he said.
Smith started his hotel career in operations and has won several awards as a general manager. As an executive at Marriott, he oversaw more than 2,500 hotels across the world, two-thirds of which were brand-managed. He led a workforce of more than 230,000 hotel and regional support center associates who were responsible for operations, development, brand acquisitions, sales and marketing, legal, and human resources.
Among his accomplishments, Smith led Marriott’s realignment and resourcing of its international markets, including the reorganization of its four autonomous regions. He also oversaw four international presidents and their teams. He was the lead strategist for Marriott’s global growth plan and managed a development pipeline of more than 1,000 projects across the globe.
Smith retired from Marriott in February 2024 after 35 years in hospitality and moved with his wife back to San Diego, where the two first met. While he was ready to sit back and enjoy some sunsets, Smith said he had warned his wife that there were a handful of dream jobs that could pull him off the bench.
“When I heard about this opening, I was like, ‘Well, this job is who I am,’” he said. “I’m an operator at heart. I love hotels, I love operating a company that’s No. 1 job is operating hotels for others.”
When he started his career, third-party operators were few and far between, Smith said. There may have been the occasional franchisee who owned and ran their own hotel, but there was a lot of brand management. Now, the third-party operator space has grown so fast as brands pull back from hotel operations.
“That creates an opportunity for us," he said. "So, if we can continue to grow — let's call it the difference between us and our competitors — and make it even stronger, I think we're going to grow faster than the industry. It's a massive opportunity that's happening right now, not just the United States but also overseas."
His experience as an operator with Marriott has helped prepare him for this role and working with hotel owners, Smith said. Third-party operators deal with the same pressures from owners who want more profit balanced against quality hospitality.
It's something that operators have to manage and sometimes push back on, he said.
It can require "teaching the owner that I'm doing this for your asset's long-term benefits," he said. "So, we can think short-term, we can think long-term, but also can we create efficiencies with our size that really deliver more profit for our owners or even on the top line create more value through sales because of our size and our distribution."
Board Direction
As executive chairman, Joyce will work with Smith and Aimbridge’s senior management team to make progress on its strategic plans, including the streamlining of its U.S. internal structure and grow the company’s global portfolio.
In an interview, Joyce said that’s about making the market organization the strongest and most efficient it can be for owners with the highest revenue positioning and best profitability. Aimbridge founder and former CEO Dave Johnson built Aimbridge on an owner-focused culture, he said.
Having Smith on board as CEO along with others on the leadership team will put Aimbridge in the right position, Joyce said. There has been a lot of preparation done over the last six to nine months, putting things in place, and it’s all coming to fruition.
“The organizational structure and design, the increase in the focus on both U.S. and international — all that has been being worked on for a while, and now with the final piece of that is Craig coming in and being able to execute against all of that,” he said.
In early February, Aimbridge announced the creation of an owner relations team led by Aly El-Bassuni, divisional president of owner relations. It's an advisory committee that will have representatives across ownership groups focusing on finding opportunities to drive performance, share expert resources and make improvements.
Aimbridge also simplified its U.S. operations, organizing them into two divisions. The first is Aimbridge Select, which focuses on select-service hotels, such as economy and extended-stay properties, and is led by Simon Mendy, divisional president of select service.
The second is Aimbridge Full Service, which focuses on full-service, luxury and resort business, and it includes Aimbridge's lifestyle hotels vertical, Evolution. Rob Smith, divisional president of full service, leads this division.
With the additions to Aimbridge's leadership and board positions, the existing strength in the company and the work done so far, it's ready to move forward, Joyce said.
"Now it's really time for execution and really pushing the needle, because I think this is the right time, at the right point in the industry's recovery that this is really going to be a huge opportunity for the company and for our owners to actually get back into really [return on investment]-based returns that makes sense for all the owners," he said.