Atlanta, Ga.–Atlanta-based Hotel Equities (HE) announced that the company is expanding with the opening of a regional office in Houston. The expansion comes after a period of strong growth for the hotel ownership, management, and development firm in the Texas market since 2016. HE currently represents 26 hotels in Texas, including the recent addition of four new-build hotels in Houston.
“The timing was right,” says HE’s President and CEO Brad Rahinsky. “In order to ensure best-in-class results to our key stakeholders, we needed to expand our field operations reach, capacity, and speed to market. Delivering exceptional results to our owners is the catalyst for our growth; we get bigger organically via strong results and deliverables in each market we have a presence in.”
Today, HE’s portfolio represents 115 hotels in 25 states and provinces throughout the United States and Canada, operating 28 different hotel brands. The firm’s four recent new-build additions triggered the regional expansion which includes full departmental oversight. “We heard from our owners on how important having an in-state presence is,” says Joe Reardon, senior vice president of business development and marketing for HE. “The additional regional office will allow us to have boots on the ground to deliver optimum value for our owners during pre-development, construction, and quick ramp to market for our Texas portfolio of hotels.”
Gary Shultz was recently appointed regional director of operations. The Regional Director of Sales, Kristen Vasquez has more than 10 years of sales experience in the Texas market. In addition, HE has deployed two regional revenue managers—Amy Greenwood and Yanbo Zhu—who will work with the portfolio of hotels and the regional team to ensure top-line results are achieved in share. The accounting and HR support will remain at HE’s corporate headquarters in Atlanta. This regional team is led by Vice President of Operations Dominic Buompastore, Vice President of Sales and Marketing Cesar Wurm, and Senior Vice President of Revenue Generation Drew Salapka.