It was a short retirement for Craig Smith. The former group president and managing director – international at Marriott International, who retired in February 2023 after a 35-year career with the company, has been tapped as the new CEO of Aimbridge Hospitality, succeeding Mike Deitemeyer, who left the company last November.
The move is effective as of March 18.
Contemporaneously, Steve Joyce has been elevated to executive chairman, effective immediately, as Glenn Murphy, chairman, transitions to a board seat. Michael Barnello, former CEO and president of LaSalle Hotel Properties and founder and managing partner of Badlands Hotel Capital, joins the Aimbridge board.
Despite retirement, Smith’s LinkedIn profile read like someone not ready to hag it up and on the lookout for the next opportunity. Up to today it stated: “Craig is currently pursuing his professional ‘next chapter’ after an illustrious multiple-decade career at Marriott International, Inc. where he steadily rose through the ranks ascending to one of the hospitality giant’s top posts.”
According to an Aimbridge press release, and further stated amid his LinkedIn page, Smith’s hospitality career has been illustrious: As head of Marriott’s international division, he was responsible for business performance at more than 2,500 hotels worldwide—two-thirds of which were brand managed—across brands in 136 countries and territories. He served as lead strategist for Marriott’s global growth plan and managed a development pipeline of more than 1,000 projects around the world.
Smith began his career in operations as an assistant housekeeping manager and went on to become a general manager (in varied locations from San Salvador to Phuket before assuming various executive roles.
The press release further stated that Smith will seek to “leverage his extensive experience to design and accelerate plans at Aimbridge that puts the general manager at the center, drives greater value at scale, results in superior property performance and creates an industry-leading culture.”
“Aimbridge’s reputation as a trusted global hotel operator and the team’s desire to outperform at every turn is what excites me about taking on the CEO role,” said Smith. “There is still tremendous opportunity to enhance our service offering to consistently deliver outstanding results for our owners and further drive brand expansion across all verticals domestically and abroad. As we go forward, we’ll put even greater emphasis on strengthening operations and simplifying our approach to be built around the general manager, activating operational efficiencies that leverage our scale and create material value for us and our partners, and doubling down on our commitment to recruit, develop and train the best people in the industry, including helping the next generation of talent thrive.”
Joyce, who assumes the executive chairman mantle, and is the former CEO of Choice Hotels Intl., is said to be expected to wkr closely with Smith to “advance strategic plans,” including finalizing the previously announced streamlined structure in the U.S.
Like Smith, Joyce was also a long-time Marriott executive, having served with the company for 25 years.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Aimbridge can—and will be—the best third-party operator in the world, and it starts with embedding a seasoned leader with a deep track record of driving outsized performance across all key metrics—that’s Craig S. Smith,” Joyce said. “If you look at what Craig has achieved during his 35-year career as a hospitality leader, it’s clear that he knows how to develop winning strategies, set superior operational standards, and most critically, motivate and activate teams to get the best out of his people. In my role, I look forward to supporting Craig as we take Aimbridge to the next level and work to deliver the best product offering the industry has seen to date.”
Bridging the Gap
It’s been a tumultuous few years for Plano, Texas-based Aimbridge. The reported plan back in 2021 was to take the company public, but that measure stalled as the credit markets turned. Deitemeyer, who became CEO of Aimbridge shortly after it merged with Interstate Hotels & Resorts in 2019, was tasked to make it happen.
Beyond the rather iffy economic environment at the time, Aimbridge, which currently manages more than 1,500 hotels, has a model that can be difficult for Wall Street to underwrite, with contracts, in some cases, having 30-day cancellation outs, making it difficult to put an intrinsic value on the company due to a nebulous churn rate. Longer-term attrition rates also make it a challenge. It has a volatile business model that is difficult to append a multiple on.
Aimbridge is a huge company, far and away the largest third-party hotel manager in the world. Scale matters, it helps, but being so big also can make it difficult to manage each hotel effectively. In Aimbridge’s prepared statement, it emphasized Smith’s GM background and his concerted effort to rely more heavily on GMs as the fulcrum. In other words, Aimbridge is a huge company that wants to operate more locally.