Recently on Hospitality Daily, Drew Bridges of JMI Realty explained why the company selected Avion Hospitality to manage the Hilton Garden Inn Austin Downtown. The process offers useful lessons for both hotel owners choosing management companies and operators competing to manage their properties.
JMI’s approach starts with a basic premise: the right operator for one hotel may be wrong for another.
Start with the hotel, not the management company
When JMI was selecting a management company for the Hilton Garden Inn Austin Downtown, it was looking for the best company that fit this particular hotel.
The Hilton Garden Inn is a select-service property in Austin. “If it was [a] full-service luxury deal, we would be talking to a different subset of management companies,” Bridges says.
For this property, JMI considered whether potential operators knew Texas, understood the asset type, had experience with Hilton Garden Inn, and had an organization suited to what JMI wanted from an operating partner.
“When we’re selecting a brand or a manager, it’s very market and deal dependent,” Bridges says.
For operators, there’s an important implication: being a strong management company isn’t enough. An owner needs a reason to believe you’re the right management company for this hotel.
JMI wanted a founder-led company
One characteristic mattered particularly to Bridges: whether the management company was founder-led. He is a strong believer in founder-led businesses and associates them with speed, accountability, and the ability to make difficult decisions quickly.
That became part of JMI’s criteria for the Hilton Garden Inn.
“When we chose Avion, that was definitely top of the list in terms of criteria,” he says. “Which one of these companies we are talking to are founder-led? Which one of these companies are Texas-based? Which one of these companies are familiar with the asset type and the brand, Hilton Garden Inn?”
The preference for founder-led companies is Bridges’ own philosophy, not a universal rule for choosing a hotel operator. But the underlying question is useful for any owner: How will the structure of this management company affect what happens when something at the hotel needs to change?
Owners aren’t only hiring systems, standards, and expertise. They’re hiring an organization that will have to make decisions, hold people accountable, and respond when performance isn’t where it needs to be.
JMI looked for evidence of guest service performance
JMI also knew something about the hotel it wanted its new management company to improve: guest service. Bridges wanted evidence that the operators under consideration could deliver it, so he turned to AI.
“I did have Claude Code set up a program to harvest guest service scores for the companies that we were considering,” Bridges says. “Avion ranked at the top as well.”
JMI ultimately selected Avion to manage the hotel.
“We knew we needed to fix guest service,” Bridges said, “and so we used our process to figure out whether the people we were hiring to manage the hotel would be able to solve it.”
What’s more interesting is the question JMI was trying to answer. Instead of asking only who says they’re good at guest service, JMI looked for evidence that the companies it was considering could perform against a specific need at the hotel.
Your operating record can become part of the pitch
That creates an interesting implication for hotel management companies. Owners have traditionally evaluated potential operators through relationships, references, brand experience, case studies, and operating results. AI makes it increasingly practical to investigate other evidence as well.
For an operator competing for a contract, the performance across your existing portfolio may become part of the pitch whether you put it in the presentation or not.
If an owner needs to improve guest service, what would they find if they examined guest feedback across hotels you already manage? If a hotel has persistent maintenance problems, what evidence suggests your organization can establish stronger engineering discipline?
The point isn’t that every owner will replicate JMI’s analysis. It’s that operators should expect sophisticated owners to have more ways to test the claims they make about their capabilities.
Terms came after fit
None of this meant JMI ignored economics. Once the company had evaluated potential management companies against what it needed at the hotel, Bridges says the process still had to reach workable commercial terms.
“So we go through that first, then it all comes down to terms,” he says. “Can we get to terms with them?”
The order is worth noticing: JMI first tried to determine which operators fit the hotel and what it needed, then worked through whether acceptable terms could be reached.
For management companies competing for contracts, that means understanding the asset and what the owner believes needs to change, then showing why your organization is particularly equipped to make that change happen.
For the Hilton Garden Inn Austin Downtown, JMI wanted a Texas-based, founder-led company with relevant asset and brand experience. It also wanted evidence that the operator could deliver strong guest service. Those criteria led JMI to Avion.
The broader lesson is simple: start with what the hotel needs from its operator, then find the management company that fits.
Listen to the full Drew Bridges interview on Hospitality Daily
