ATLANTA — After 30 years in the hotel management business, Hospitality America is looking at a new way to grow that will keep its hands-on approach with its owners.
"Historically, our growth has all been through development of the key partnerships that we've had," said Ben Campbell, president and CEO at Hospitality America, in an interview at the 2026 Hunter Conference. "We're starting to look at more acquisitions. We did our first acquisition in 2023, and now that's seeming to be a lot more viable."
Campbell said that Hospitality America is well-positioned to grow in its current markets. Maybe down the road new development will become more of a viable option, he added.
With 20 hotels in its portfolio, Campbell said he's able to interface with the company's ownership groups regularly, so as the company grows, retaining this way of working is top of mind. And, with these regular touchpoints, Campbell said that hotel owners' biggest concerns right now all have to do with margin creep and being able to consistently deliver an experience to guests.
"We're doing a lot today in soft-branded hotels with a lot of our partners and development partners — helping advise them on what the guest is experiencing or what the guest is looking for out into the future, and that's where I spend a lot of my time," he said. "I think that the hospitality industry will be a lot more fine-tuned as we look into the future. We're already seeing that today, but the experience has to be very, very intentional."
One of the ways to accomplish this is getting Hospitality America's data out of its silos and into a data lake that can be used by artificial intelligence, Campbell said.
"What we're doing from our data — that's where we think the secret sauce will be to making decisions quicker, faster and hopefully with less bias than we bring sometimes," he said.
AI is coming for the hospitality industry, but what Campbell said he hopes hotel companies avoid is cutting out the leadership pathways that have existed for employees. Campbell, who started in his 20s as a night auditor, worked his way up to CEO, and those success stories might happen less if the industry isn't intentional about it.
"What keeps me up at night a lot of times is what the future looks like for our industry for growing the next leader," he said. "What I tell our team teams is we've got to be ready to grow that mid-level manager into the business leader that we require for our industry."
For more from Hospitality America's Ben Campbell, watch the video or listen to the podcast embedded above.