MANCHESTER, England — Interstate Hotels & Resorts, credited as the hotel-management company that kick-started third-party management in Europe, officially changed its name this week to Aimbridge EMEA, for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The move comes a little more than three years after Interstate announced it would merge with Plano, Texas-based Aimbridge Hospitality in July 2019, which was first announced by Hotel News Now. At that time, the merger created a portfolio of approximately 1,400 branded and independent properties in 49 states and 20 countries.
The company's division outside of the U.S. retained the Interstate Hotels & Resorts moniker at the time.
Today, Aimbridge has nearer to 1,600 hotels, with 114 of those in Europe. Aimbridge currently manages properties in Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Ireland, Kazakhstan, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and soon it will announce a hotel-management deal in Spain with a Dutch owner. The company exited Russia following the February Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Our goal is to double the size of our European portfolio in the next three to five years, and with new geographies,” said David Anderson, Aimbridge EMEA's divisional president during a break at the Annual Hotel Conference in Manchester.
Anderson said the time to rename Interstate as Aimbridge EMEA is right, but no significant strategy changes are on the horizon.
“We now have one brand, shared procurement and best-of-class talent," he said. "The news makes it far easier to market to investors, but our structure is not changing. We remain the leading third-party management company in Europe, and with the largest growth."
Anderson said executives formerly attached to Interstate knew this change would happen at some point following the 2019 merger. The move will allow Aimbridge to expand into new markets such as Spain, where he added 58% of hotel investment derives from the U.S.
“In the Gulf, the Aimbridge name is known more than is Interstate,” he said. “With one global brand, Aimbridge, it makes everyone’s life easier and more impactful.
“We’re aligned with owners and their strategies,” he said, adding the firm has approximately 55,000 employees.
Being a part of Aimbridge has also brought the company's strategies and tools to a new pool of owners.
“The financial, forecasting and proprietary tools we now have access to will give owners with multinational interests the same reporting for all their assets on the same day and in a language they chose,” Anderson said.
Mark Tamis, president of global operations at Aimbridge, said the firm now has far more flexibility globally and increased IT resources and systems available for all of the brand-affiliated hotels it manages.
“Branded hotel firms first became asset-light, and now they’re becoming management-light,” he said.
Anderson said Aimbridge now has more branded hotels than the hotel brand companies have themselves.
Allison Reid, Aimbridge's chief global growth officer, said aligned systems “have resulted in smarter data, and with scale,” which provides more intelligent underwriting.
She said investors are better able to realize the returns they expected.
Anderson said in the last three months of available data, occupancy has returned to 83% to 84% of 2019 levels across Aimbridge's portfolio, while average daily rate has surpassed that year, coming in at 20% to 30% above 2019 levels.
Aimbridge EMEA has managed the 31-asset portfolio of Jupiter Hotels, which started as a third-party management firm, since November 2020.
Ready for Deals
Anderson said Aimbridge EMEA's future is promising in terms of adding both single hotel assets and portfolios in Europe. Among its recent hotel openings in Europe, Aimbridge has opened the 117-room Holiday Inn Express Brussels-Grande-Place.
“We work with all the brands, and they bring the deals to us,” he said.
Reid added its largest source of potential additions come from investors.
“Also, from influencers in the industry,” she said, “although we realize there is more capital out there than there are deals, but Aimbridge has a lot of access to deal flow.”
Tamis said the firm’s increased scale allowed the firm to “put the pieces together to make value for everyone.”