Two of Aimbridge Hospitality’s top executives are leaving the company as part of its restructuring under new CEO Craig Smith.
The Plano, Texas-based third-party hotel management company announced today that Global President Mark Tamis will depart the company on May 17. Allison Reid, chief global growth officer, is stepping down from her role effective immediately.
Eric Jacobs, currently chief development officer for U.S. midscale brands and Canada at Marriott International, will join Aimbridge June 2 as its new chief global growth officer and report directly to Aimbridge President and CEO Smith.
These changes come after Smith stepped into the role of CEO in mid-March following the departure of Mike Deitemeyer at the end of 2023.
During a mid-April fireside chat with hotel owners and subsequent interview with Hotel News Now, Smith said he wanted "to flatten" Aimbridge removing layers between leadership and the hotels the company manages.
“We’ve got to think like a small, third-party management company and less like a large company,” he said at the time.
Smith said having a greater focus on hotel general managers is an important part of Aimbridge's overall strategy.
“The truth of the matter is, if you center everything around that general manager, they’ll make everything work on property,” he said.
Speaking with reporters on Thursday, Smith said the company is focused on the success of each individual hotel, and that comes from having a general manager-centric approach, flattening out the layers by removing bureaucracy and having the right talent. These changes all move the company toward that overall goal.
Bureaucracy itself isn't bad, but it can slow implementing solutions, he said.
"The less layers that we have between the owners and the leaders of the company, the faster decisions are made, the more we can empower teams and the quicker and more nimble we are," he said.
In Jacobs' new role at Aimbridge, he will oversee all aspects of the company's growth and development domestically and internationally. Aimbridge will draw on his three decades of experience in development, operations and brand creation and positioning.
During his tenure at Marriott, Jacobs added nearly 2,400 hotels with 264,000 rooms to Marriott's portfolio. Most recently, he led the company's expansion into the midscale space, including the acquisition of the City Express portfolio of brands as well as the launch of Four Points Express by Sheraton brand and the StudioRes extended-stay brand.
Smith said he knows Jacobs from his years working at Marriott, learning recently that Aimbridge has been trying to recruit Jacobs for years. Smith praised his drive, ethics, collaborative approach and how he builds relationships with owners.
"I think when the word gets out, we'll find a lot of our owners know him by reputation and many of them know him from his time with Marriott, but also the time that they've worked with him at other companies before that," he said. "I think there's going to be a very, very warm reception to have him back working in third-party management space."
Among its other changes in leadership, Aimbridge has promoted and expanded the roles of two of its executives.
Aly El-Bassuni, president of owner relations, will see his role expand to include operations resources. He’ll continue to oversee the owner-relations aspects of the company while also leading the operations task force, brand relations, property retention, transitions and operational finance. El-Bassuni's new role will have him lead Aimbridge’s commercial teams, which includes revenue management, digital marketing, e-commerce and sales. El-Bassuni will report directly to Smith.
Allison Handy, senior vice president of select-service sales, will serve as senior vice president of sales, North America. In this role, she will oversee Aimbridge's full-service, select-service and the national sales team. She will report directly to El-Bassuni.
Aimbridge is setting itself up to be "a turbocharged" organization that is general manager- and hotel-centric and focuses on each hotel, each owner and each brand, Smith said.
"I think we're going to do this by continuing to remove layers, and the removing of those layers will increase our speed," he said. "They will take out bureaucracy, and it will also drives performances."