NASHVILLE, Tennessee — With increasing costs and few transactions to drive change of management, the current environment is an especially difficult one to be a third-party hotel operator.
But Aperture Hotels President and CEO Charles Oswald says his company is still seeing opportunities to grow in part because it's young and nimble.
"One of the things that's different about Aperture is we're a very young organization formed about two and a half years ago, and so with that, what you're getting is a lot of folks that have big experience," he said during an interview at the 2025 Hotel Data Conference. "For example, I've managed about 300 hotels now in the course of my career, but we're a boutique-size organization at this stage."
Aperture focuses on what Oswald describes as "premium select-service, compact full-service and lifestyle" hotels, with a recent focus on soft-branded properties. He added the company's executives pride themselves on that balance of being enterprising and experience.
"So with just 25 properties under management, it means that we're kind of gritty," he said "We persevere. We're nimble, innovative, and you have a lot of folks on our team that have some, maybe some bigger, broader experience. But we're kind of able to pay attention to a smaller portfolio of individual assets and respond to owners' needs."
He pointed to the company's embracing of technology as a competitive advantage, including seeing significant potential for artificial intelligence across the hotel industry.
Nowadays, hotel transactions are on the decline and owners are less inclined to make management changes at their properties like the flurry of activity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oswald said Aperture is seeing more of an opportunity to grow via new-construction hotels, despite the generally lower pace of supply growth across the hotel industry.
"We actually have a surprising number of new developments in the pipeline, brand conversions, adaptive reuse, and that is something that we had not seen in our pipeline in the past," he said.
For the rest of the interview with Aperture Hotels' Charles Oswald, watch the video above.