PHOENIX — Aimbridge Hospitality's executive leadership has undergone multiple changes over the past year.
New faces and new roles, appointments and promotions have given the top a new look, but its leaders will say the goal remains the same: driving results for owners.
At the recent Lodging Conference, HNN sat down with Eric Jacobs, chief global growth officer, and Aly El-Bassuni, president, operations, owner and brand relations, to talk about their roles and what they see ahead for Aimbridge.
Open for business
Many of Aimbridge’s top executives are within their first six to seven months with the company, Jacobs said. His first 90 days focused on the momentum of building his team across the board and assessing the talent within Aimbridge. What has been exciting is finding and learning more about those talented employees.
The team has been focused on partnerships and making sure everyone understands Aimbridge's primary customers are hotel owners, he said. Everything they do should focus on owners' success through having great general managers, property employees, technology and actionable data.
Aimbridge’s culture required some steadying following changes in leadership, but overall, it’s a strong culture, Jacobs said.
“You could feel it in the building. You feel it in the field,” he said. “You feel the commitment by the people who are out there with us.”
Aimbridge is facing its biggest challenge right now, and every third-party manager is feeling it — the lack of hotel transactions.
“The third-party business relies on people transacting,” Jacobs said. “You could certainly go and try to convince somebody to leave somebody, but that’s not really how the business works.”
Debt maturities will likely play a bigger part in hotels changing hands next year, he said. While lowered interest rates raised some eyebrows, it’s going to take more than that to drive deals, Jacobs said. At the same time, over the last 60 days, Aimbridge has seen an upswing in contract opportunities through new builds and transactions.
The volume is below pre-pandemic levels, but Aimbridge is well-positioned to jump on them, he said. The leadership team in place is ready to leverage the company’s scale to benefit hotel owners by better supporting the hotel teams.
As the brands move further into the franchising world, it’s going to open more opportunities for third-party operators, Jacobs said. Much of his work lately has been meeting with different brand companies to see where Aimbridge could play a bigger role for them by partnering to help them drive their international growth.
“My last three years at Marriott were all about, how do we help accelerate franchising internationally,” he said. “So, recognizing that if Marriott and Hyatt and Hilton are pushing on that, that's a big opportunity.”
Aimbridge makes up about 10% of the third-party operating space in the U.S., and it has a smaller share internationally, Jacobs said.
“It’s not just a North American play for Aimbridge — it’s a global play,” he said.
Another factor to consider when working with owners in international locations is that the hold strategy is different, Jacobs said. The transaction markets in North America are good with some ebb and flow, but that’s due to the mostly short-term ownership strategies at play here. In this region, most owners plan for a five- to seven-year hold. In other continents, owners have 10-, 15- and 25-year holds.
What benefits Aimbridge is its international experience; it already operates in 13 countries. It’s one of a few that operate outside of the U.S. and Canada.
“It’s a unique opportunity for us,” Jacobs said. “A lot of incoming inquiries, too, as they’re seeing the brand push further away, and even inquiries from the brands saying, ‘Hey, can you manage in this area for us? I have a partner.’”
Supporting teams, owners
In his expanded role, El-Bassuni said his core focus is heading up all Aimbridge's shared resources across the organization. Roughly three or four months ago, the company elevated Allison Handy on his team to executive vice president of commercial, creating a centralized shared-services commercial group that works cohesively across the enterprise while also having a division focus based on the verticals.
“While we brought the team together into one centralized core and commercial engine, we still have the functional expertise across the organization to support top-line growth and market share,” he said.
On the operations and resources perspective, El-Bassuni said he’s responsible for the transitions group, onboarding new hotels and owners into the company.
“We need to deploy capable, Aimbridge-trained people to keep the operation going forward while we backfill a critical [general manager] role,” he said.
Along with also overseeing the centralized engineering and food-and-beverage teams, El-Bassuni also heads up operational excellence, where his team is responsible for brand relations. Given its importance, Aimbridge’s team meets regularly with the brands.
The brands want Aimbridge to drive top line and use their brand resources to drive performance, he said. They want operators to be good stewards of the brand, deliver a good guest experiences and be ambassadors of their loyalty programs.
On the owner relations side, El-Bassuni said he’s responsible for how the company looks at owner coverage, and the executive leadership team own certain owner relations and accounts, making sure they are visible and accessible.
“We pride ourselves on being a highly accessible executive leadership team, that any owner we do business with can pick up the phone and call any one of us, and that's the type of culture that I really focus on, and we hold each other accountable by doing that,” he said.
There isn’t a single brand in the industry that has more than a single-digit percentage of growth allocated to management, El-Bassuni said. Every brand, without exception, is looking at more than 90%, and in some cases 100%, growth through franchising.
“So, enter third-party management,” he said. “There’s a very interesting triad between brands, owners/developers and third-party managers, and for the foreseeable future, this space is going to grow. As long as we’re adding inventory and rooms and there’s transactions happening in this space, there’s going to be a lot of opportunities for third-party managers.”
Transactions also create the risk of owners switching to other operators. To retain those owners, Aimbridge needs to perform and drive value to the relationship, El-Bassuni said. Doing that gets more share of the wallet and more deals with existing owners.
One way Aimbridge is growing is through its existing owners, he said. These hotel owners want Aimbridge to drive the top line, grow market share, protect their margins and grow their bottom line.
“They want us to deliver on a good guest experience, and they want us to bring our talent to bear and have the best talent in the industry,” he said. “We put a stake in the ground this year with our [general managers].”