PHOENIX — Patrick Short is rejoining TPG Hotels & Resorts, and he's doing so with a plan for the company's culture, structure and more.
The Dallas-based third-party hotel management company appointed Short as president and chief operating officer on Oct. 9. TPG has about 130 properties in its portfolio across 22 states.
Short joins TPG from CSM Corp., where he was the executive vice president of residential and lodging. He previously served as president of hospitality management at Peachtree Group.
Short also served as vice president of operations at TPG from 2015 to 2018. He said there's a lot that is unchanged from his previous tenure with the company but also a lot of newness at the same time.
"There's a lot of the same, because we have a lot of the same executives, a lot of long-term 20- to 30-year employees," he said. "But yet, it's very different. They've really moved — when I was with them, there was 55 to 58 hotels. Now we're up to about 125."
There are three things Short wants to achieve with TPG out the gate as he takes over his new roles: solidify its culture; make sure the company's structure is right; and connect and understand the needs of its hotel owners.
Short said he wants to instill its culture "very, very quickly."
"It's all about us at the management level truly taking care of our [general managers] and [directors of sales] and providing the support they need to be successful," he said. "We'll talk culture from Day 1 as I get into the organization and get in the office in Dallas."
Short's experience running a third-party hotel management company in the past has shown him the proper structure in which one should operate, he said.
"I know what owners need. I know the resources that we have to provide," he said. "Getting that right and getting it at the right scale so we can have growth is super important."
Part of knowing what hotel owners need is having an open channel of communication with them so the strategy for each property is clear, he said.
"We take a very asset-by-asset approach. Some assets are going to be legacy holds, and we will manage those very different than if it's an institutional owner that wants to get out in three to five years," he said. "We will meet with each owner, understand their goals ... and then we'll put plans and actions to accomplish that."
TPG manages full-service, select-service and independent hotels across all segment classes. As the company continues its growth trajectory, Short said TPG is not targeting any particular asset class, but rather owners that it can build a sustainable partnership with.
In regard to the hotel industry as a whole, Short said he's "just cautious" as opposed to the popular "cautiously optimistic" turn of phrase looking ahead to 2026. He expects a sluggish outlook for the next 12 to 18 months before the hotel business gets back into shape.
"We've had some really tough years during COVID, came out of it and got a little fat again and happy, and now it's time to be disciplined and focused on our expense control, our labor management — all the things that we can control," he said.
There's never been more of a disparity in hotel performance from market to market, Short said. This just reinforces his strategy of taking a different approach for every property rather than one, broad set of ideals.
"The properties that are still doing well, we need to invest in them and push them. And the ones that are having a difficult market, we need to be on costs and making sure we're maximizing profits," he said.