Suburban Extended Stay Hotel in Huntsville, AL
Hotel Management Services, Inc. (HMS), the hospitality development and management division of Mitch Cox Companies, finished the year with a total of twenty-one hotels in seven states under management.
HMS deepened its expertise and diversity in the extended stay hotel market, expanding its brands to include 16 WoodSpring Suites, 4 Suburbans, and 1 Value Place.
The year began with the sale of two hotels—in February, HMS sold its Brookstone Lodge hotel in Asheville to focus on extended stay properties and in July, HMS sold its WoodSpring Suites property in Champaign, Illinois to focus the portfolio and improve operations. The fall was a busy season for acquisitions and rebranding as HMS purchased and reflagged a Birmingham, Alabama hotel into a Suburban Extended Stay and rebranded its Value Place hotel in Huntsville, Alabama also into a Suburban Extended Stay.
“We’ve loaded up on our team,” said Philip Cox, President of HMS, pointing to a roster that now boasts five area managers as well as new positions in support, accounting, and revenue management. “We are planning to see larger strides of growth next year.”
Before the end of 2018, HMS is closing on the Suburban Extended Stay Hotel in Clarksville, Indiana, located just north of Louisville, Kentucky.
Cox plans to expand further into the U.S. extended stay market in 2019, eyeing strategic acquisitions nationwide to further carve out the company’s specialized niche in extended stay products and management.
“We have a great team,” said Kathy Maile, Senior Vice President of Operations at HMS. “We’re making our own policies and procedures right now, including brand standards specific to each hotel property, but we’re also able to take the best processes and lessons and spread them back out to the rest of the company so that everybody learns,” she said. “Our team specializes in different areas and everyone learns as we communicate with each other. The open forum culture we have worked hard to build is really starting to bloom.”