HB EXCLUSIVE: Drive & determination – Eric Danziger & team build Resolute Road as a third-party manager

Eric Danziger is a builder of companies. Over his 52-year career, he helped build Wyndham Hotel Group, Carlson Hotels Worldwide and Starwood Hotels into the hotel industry titans they would become. Now, he plans on building Resolute Road Hospitality to become a major player among third-party management companies.

The industry veteran left the C-suite at Trump Hotels last March to move to Boise, ID-based Braintree Group, where he was named CEO of the real estate development and investment firm. While retaining the role of Braintree CEO, he has formed Resolute Road as the hotel management subsidiary of the parent company.

“Braintree Group has three business lines—self-storage, multifamily and hospitality—and it was confusing [to people],” Danziger said. “How can Braintree Group manage hotels but also be an owner of self-storage and a developer of multifamily? So, for clarity purposes, the management subsidiary of Braintree Group is Resolute Road Hospitality. Braintree is the real estate developer and owner, so the two do coexist. Resolute Road runs hotels for Braintree, but the expanded purpose is third-party management.”

He believes that Resolute Road’s previous role as the hospitality division of Braintree Group will give it an advantage when it comes to attracting third-party management contracts.

“In the management business, in general, there is a need for much greater sensitivity to think like an owner,” he said. “In our case, we actually are an owner and we manage for an owner because it’s us. That teaches you all kinds of disciplines that you might not otherwise have. It’s just a different focus and a different sensitivity than a pure outside management company. And given that our performance at our hotels is, quite frankly, superior to the comp set, we figured we should exploit that and offer that to owners of properties that we don’t own.”

It’s never easy coming up with the name of a new company, but what Danziger and his team chose turned out to be in line with its mission.

“We started with a blank slate and said, ‘Let’s try to create the wording for who we are, what we are and what the story is,’ and we came up with ‘resolute,’” he said. “Resolute is determination. It’s not giving up and never settling. It’s ‘get after it and don’t stop until you get it.’ We did Resolute Road because we created a tagline ‘Driven by a promise.’ That ties into this DNA of what we are going to be. We’re driven and we are going to go down a road, never finding a destination and never having an ending.”

While Resolute Road hasn’t officially come up with a mission statement, Danziger pointed out, “We are resolute to provide the greatest connectivity with owners, sensitivity to owners, transparency to owners and accessibility to owners, and to outperform our competitive set, yielding great returns to owners.”

The executive team
The industry veteran has assembled a team of Braintree Group executives to take Resolute Road on its journey. Gary Horton, the former president of Braintree’s hospitality division, serves in the same role at Resolute Road.

“Gary has been running the hotels [for Braintree], and we do an amazing job and outperform everybody else,” said Danziger. “He obviously brings the ability to continue that performance as we go down the road.”

Daniel Pinheiro is Resolute Road’s chief business development officer, a role he will also continue at Braintree Group. “Daniel wasn’t an operator, but he has an owner lens, so in terms of an owner questioning returns, investment and management company’s performance, he offers that experience,” said the CEO.

Kristen Knapp, a former JLL executive, serves as chief investment officer for both Resolute Road and Braintree Group.

“It’s important to acknowledge that Braintree is an owner, and it’s going to seek to acquire more hotels,” said Danziger. “Aimbridge grew because it acquired some hotels and then acquired companies. So, I needed somebody who is able to create and manage funds and do great deals for both an investor and for the owner. So, Kristen is the chief investment officer because she’s got incredible skills in that regard and also happens to have a great overall perspective that can look at everything else that’s being done and add comments as well.”

The Resolute Road team is rounded out by Russ Criddle, CFO, and Brittany Iverson, chief people officer, who serve in their respective roles for both the management company and Braintree, as well as Aimee Tylor, director of operations, and Kevin O’Neil and Richard Sprecher, who both serve as VP of business development.

The management services
According to Horton, among the offerings that Resolute Road provides to clients are management services and operational support, while “Daniel and his team can look at potential asset acquisitions. We’re willing to offer to an owner any services that we’ve provided for ourselves in the past. We’ve done it well, and we’re just trying to offer that to the rest of the industry.”

Danziger added, “If you’re going to do a PIP, a repositioning or a redesign, we have interior design and construction people. We have revenue management, technical services, centralized accounting and procurement people. All of the things that an owner needs to have performed by whoever is operating a hotel is what we’ve packaged together for them.”

The company can customize its offerings based on the client’s needs, noted Knapp, who added, “If it’s a family that owns three assets, and we manage all three, they are going to need a different level of service and reporting than [a big ownership group].”

Horton, Pinheiro and Knapp believe that having Danziger at the helm gives Resolute Road an advantage over other management companies from the get-go.

“Obviously, Eric is a fantastic leader; there’s a certain level of calmness that 50 years of experience at every level of the business brings,” said Knapp. “And following him into battle gives everyone the confidence to go into unknown territory. Having him as our leader allows everyone at every level of the organization to say, ‘We can do this. This is our mission, and we’re going to do what it takes to execute.’”

Pinheiro offered, “We’ve known for years that we run hotels better than anyone, but to have someone with Eric’s stature come in and validate that, and then to have the vision and the experience to grow, that just gives us much more confidence and excitement to see what this moonshot could look like.”

Horton called Danziger his third mentor. “He’s now taken it and removed limitations to what we can become,” he said. “He’s the pinnacle of what I want to become in my career. This is going to be a great opportunity to help develop a lot of people. It’s going to open the door to everybody who wants to come and join us for a world of endless possibilities.”

“I am very grateful for the kind comments, but to the extent I have been successful, it has been because of the great teams I have been a part of, and this is one of them.” Danziger added.

The portfolio
Resolute Road launches with a portfolio of 15 hotels totaling 1,732 guestrooms, all of which are owned by Braintree Group. “Eight of these are the former AmeriTel hotels throughout the Mountain West from [Braintree’s] original acquisition, and several others come from acquisitions of hotels in markets that we had never been in before like Arizona, Nevada and Texas,” said Horton.

The portfolio consists of properties under Hilton, Wyndham, Choice and IHG flags, as well as its only independent hotel, River’s Edge Hotel in Portland, OR.

“We are brand agnostic,” said Danziger. “We want to have the right brand and the right location that generates assistance to revenue. We don’t look at the brand being the sole source of revenue. As we look at the landscape for ourselves, and for outside owners, we want to start with what would be the right answer to maximize a return on that particular property.”

The most recent addition to Resolute Road’s portfolio is the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Bend in Oregon, which Braintree Group acquired in mid-December. It will be repositioned to a Tapestry Collection by Hilton property.

“Resolute Road manages three other hotels in that market,” said Knapp. “We’ve cultivated the market with labor and cost efficiencies, and we were able to approach that property completely different than any other management company. Being able to have the scale and the knowledge in a lot of these markets is what gives us a competitive advantage.”

Pinheiro and his team are aggressively pursuing additions to the portfolio. “We’re in constant conversations with all the brokers in the industry, and we are actively underwriting new opportunities that come across our desk,” he said. “We have a team of deal junkies over here, and we love to see where the opportunities are, whether it’s through an investment or management lens.”

He added, “We’re also in conversations with all the major brands and let them know as folks reach out to them saying, ‘We have an asset here that we don’t want to manage anymore. Who do you recommend to come in and take over here?’ So all the major players have been very receptive to that. They all know Eric and our team. They all know how we run our hotels, and they’re excited to pass our name on to future partners.”

For Danziger, its all about creating an identity and getting the Resolute Road name out there as a third-party manager.

“Before we started thinking about doing this, our company was an owner-operator,” he said. “All we did was look to acquire hotels and manage them. Then we started developing this theory about Braintree Hospitality being a third-party manager before we decided to create its own identity. No one knows that we are in a third-party business. We’re just now announcing that we’re here.”

The challenges
Launching a company in 2023 comes with challenges carried over from last year, such as inflation, supply chain delays and labor shortages. Knapp is ready to tackle them head on.

“When you have so many systemic macro challenges, that’s the time to really roll up your sleeves, get dirty, get into the numbers, get into every single vendor contract, meet with your on-property teams and offer them even more support than you typically would,” she said. “And that’s how we’re really tackling these challenges. It’s time to go into overdrive and work harder on where can we find efficiencies. Are we doing things the best way that we possibly could? Is this the best solution?”

On the labor issue, Horton noted, “We will always be uber-focused on labor control because it’s our largest expense. We don’t cut corners. We don’t call it running lean; we call it running healthy. And we’ll always run healthy regardless of the economic condition. We do that with very competitive compensation, a wide array of benefits and the opportunity for growth.”

According to Knapp, 75% of Braintree Group’s above-property leaders and 64% of its hotel general managers were internal promotions from within the company, and 80% of the employees impacted by pandemic-related layoffs returned to the company.

“Anna Morris has been with [Braintree Group] for 10 years,” said Knapp. “She started in housekeeping and she’s now one of our star general managers. Erik Bingham has been with the company for 18 years. He started at the front desk and is now regional manager.”

Although Danziger is not one for forecasting, he did offer a glimpse into where he believes the company will be in five years.

“If I were to peg something, I wouldn’t be happy if, in five years, we don’t have [a managed portfolio in the]three digits. In this business, you are ultimately going to succeed by having honor, integrity, doing what you say you’re going to do and delivering on all these promises. So, if you manage a hotel just for management fees, as opposed to truly being the right answer, that road comes to a dead end pretty quick.”

Anyone who has worked in a field for more than 50 years must certainly have a passion for the business, and Danziger offered what makes the hotel industry great to him.

“Every day is a new day completely in the business,” he said. “Think about a hotel. You have 300 people in, 300 people out, so the opportunity for organized chaos is certainly real. Hotels look at data and information of their performance vs. the competitors, but they’re really managing against themselves. I’ve obviously had some bad days in 52 years, so not every day is sunshine and lollipops. But even that is learning how to manage through crisis. I think it all comes down to the fact that there are no two days alike because there are no two days where the customers are the same ones as you had yesterday. So, that just provides for a new backdrop of how that day’s going to go every day.”

For the team at Resolute Road, this is the start of a brand new day.