LOS ANGELES — Eric Danziger's resume reads like a laundry list of the most high-profile jobs in the hotel industry — most recently working as the head of a hotel company bearing the name of a sitting U.S. president. Now, he wants to build something new.
Speaking with Hotel News Now during the recent Americas Lodging Investment Summit, the former Trump Hotels CEO spoke about his new role as CEO of the Boise, Idaho-based Braintree Group, the rebranding and expansion of that company's hotel management wing into a third-party management platform — called Resolute Road Hospitality — and why he finds growing something new to be more rewarding than overseeing an established company.
"It's my most favorite thing," he said. "I'd rather build than run a big company. There are all these adages I didn't invent, like it takes 7 miles to turn a battleship and 500 feet to turn a speedboat. So, I like being able to create something large from something small. And if you look at my history, that's really what I've done. I joined DoubleTree [by Hilton] when it was five hotels."
In all, Braintree has three distinct divisions, all related to commercial real estate.
Danziger's 50 years in the hotel industry include stints as president and/or CEO at Wyndham Hotel Group, Carlson Hotels, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Hampshire Hotels Management, which transformed into Dream Hotel Group. His last — and highest-profile — job before taking over Braintree was as the CEO of Trump Hotels, a tenure that overlapped with Donald Trump's presidency.
Danziger said he's hopeful that his long track record of success in the industry will carry over and his established reputation will mean something to owners in search of a third-party management partner.
"All we have in life is our name, our reputation, our integrity, and I have a lot of years invested in doing those things and having run hotels," he said. "By now, if you add them up, it's a couple thousand hotels that I've had something to do with running, and hopefully I did a really great job for the employees and the owners. That is kind of a foot in the door, we're hoping, as we bring this out to market."
Danziger said eventually some sort of merger or acquisition could be on the table to boost Resolute Road's scale, but his team must first prove they can do the job.
"I don't want to do that until we've done what we said we were going to do," he said. "That we did organic growth. That we performed at every single property we took on. Then that becomes a story that allows you to go do bigger things because you have the support from outside saying, 'These guys are the guys to depend on.'"
For more from HNN's interview with Eric Danziger, watch the video above.