Vice President, Commercial/Hotel Asset Management

Vice President, Commercial

Starwood Capital Group

Location: London, UK or Greenwich, CT, USA

Function: Hotel Asset Management, Commercial Strategy and AI Enablement

Overview

Starwood Capital Group is seeking a Vice President, Commercial to maximize revenue and profitability across its global hotel portfolio. This role partners closely with the Hotel Asset Management teams in the US and Europe, as well as property-level and operator teams, to shape commercial strategy across revenue management, distribution, digital and ecommerce, and guest relationship management.

This is an owner-side role, the VP builds strong relationships within Starwood Capital Group and with operators and works alongside them to set priorities, support and advise their teams, and ensure the commercial strategy is executed effectively across the portfolio.

Deploying AI to drive measurable revenue and margin performance is central to this role. The VP will identify, pilot, and scale AI-enabled tools and workflows across the portfolio, from pricing and forecasting to guest acquisition and personalization. They will build the data foundation and governance needed to make those tools work and prove their value. They will also look to drive incremental direct revenues from LLM’s’ leveraging AEO/GEO and future direct connectivity options.

The ideal candidate combines high-level strategic thinking with hands-on tactical knowledge across hotel operations, including rooms management, sales, marketing, ecommerce, distribution, web development, systems architecture, and data science. They are comfortable in a fast-paced private equity environment, including complex turnarounds of hotel assets and portfolios.

Key Responsibilities

Operator Relationships and Commercial Execution

• Build and maintain strong working relationships with senior leadership and commercial teams (revenue management, sales, marketing, ecommerce, and distribution) at each third-party hotel management company and portfolio company
• Work with operators and the Asset Management team to set commercial priorities and annual plans for each hotel, and agree targets, KPIs
• Partner with operators to execute commercial strategy day to day: supporting their teams, removing blockers, and escalating where performance falls short
• Align operator commercial activity with Starwood Capital's asset-level business plans and value-creation priorities
• Bring portfolio-wide data, insight, and best practice to operators, and facilitate knowledge sharing across management companies

AI Strategy and Deployment

• Define and own the commercial AI roadmap for the hotel portfolio, prioritizing use cases by revenue impact, cost savings, and speed to deploy
• Evaluate, select, and implement AI and machine learning solutions for revenue management, forecasting, marketing, distribution, and guest engagement, using sound build-versus-buy judgment
• Run structured pilots with clear baselines and success metrics, then scale proven tools across assets and operators
• Establish ROI tracking for every AI deployment, reporting incremental RevPAR, direct booking share, conversion, and cost savings to Asset Management
• Apply generative AI and LLM-based tools to guest communications, review and sentiment analysis, content creation, and commercial reporting
• Adapt the digital strategy to AI-driven discovery, including AI-powered search, assistants, and answer engines, so the hotels stay visible and bookable
• Set data governance, model oversight, and vendor risk standards in line with GDPR/UK GDPR, CCPA, PCI-DSS, and emerging AI regulation (e.g., the EU AI Act)
• Build AI literacy among asset managers, operators, and property teams, and drive adoption through training and change management

Revenue Management

• Review and advise operator rate strategies based on trends by market segment, distribution channel, and market supply and demand
• Review, advise, and agree operator-prepared budgets and forecasts for each hotel against targeted revenue growth and market share index
• Establish pricing and rate fencing structures by segment, analyzing price and demand elasticity to optimize segment mix and profitability
• Measure price sensitivity by channel and segment to inform pricing recommendations
• Design dynamic upsell strategies by room type and demand level
• Guide selection, implementation, and optimization of AI-enabled RMS platforms for real-time pricing, forecasting, and automated decision-making, and assess operator-provided RMS performance

Distribution

• Work with operators to develop strategies to increase conversion by channel, based on booking behavior and patterns across GDS and OTAs
• Build and maintain corporate-level relationships with key OTA, GDS, and wholesale partners
• Guide support system architecture that optimizes rate, inventory, restriction, and booking data flow between PMS and CRS and the GDS, OTAs, website, and call centers
• Work with operators to drive direct bookings through metasearch and Google Hotel Ads, using bidding strategies that minimize CPA and maximize ROAS while protecting brand integrity

Ecommerce and Digital

• Work with operators to drive direct guest acquisition across paid search, LLMs, SEO, social, display, affiliate, and email, aligned to demand levels and business on the books
• Oversea website development from initial scope through ongoing product management
• Review multi-channel conversion data to build custom attribution models reflecting each hotel’s channel behavior
• Define and oversee a cybersecurity strategy for digital channels, covering breach detection and threat remediation, PCI-DSS compliance, configuration hardening, and server monitoring

Customer Relationship Management

• Work with operators to design tactical delivery at every stage of the guest lifecycle: research, book, pre-stay, in-stay, post-stay, and retention
• Plan in-house execution of acquisition and retention strategies across PMS, CRS, and CRM at key moments such as check-in and check-out
• Identify and integrate new data sources to improve the single customer view (SCV), and create SOPs that turn data into better in-stay experiences and smarter remarketing
• Monitor online reviews at each hotel and use AI-assisted sentiment analysis to recommend KPI improvements
• Review operating statements and P&Ls to find efficiencies that maximize GOP and NOI

Asset Management Partnership

• Act as the commercial subject matter expert to Hotel Asset Management teams in the US and Europe, supporting underwriting, business planning, budget reviews, and asset-level performance reviews
• Support commercial diligence on acquisitions and value-creation planning for turnaround assets
• Hold operators and third-party managers accountable for commercial performance, and share best practices across the portfolio
• Present insights and recommendations clearly to senior leadership, investment professionals, and operators

Qualifications

• At least 7 years of experience in hotel revenue management or hotel commercial leadership, including multi-property or portfolio responsibility
• Demonstrated experience deploying AI/ML tools that produced measurable commercial results
• Exposure to a fast-paced private equity or real estate investment environment, including complex turnarounds of hotel assets and portfolios
• Expert knowledge of:
• Revenue management: booking curve, displacement analysis, demand control, restrictions, break-even calculations
• Stay control: rate fencing, LOS, booking window restrictions
• Digital marketing: paid search, SEO, AEO/GEO, display, metasearch, social, email,
• Predictive analytics: regression, classification, clustering, spatial analysis, and applied machine learning

• Proficiency with key hospitality systems and interfaces:
• Revenue management: Duetto, IDeaS, Atomize, Rainmaker, or similar
• APIs and integration: OXI, OWS, and modern cloud/REST integration approaches
• PMS, CRS, and CRM: Opera (Cloud and legacy), SynXis, and major brand reservation systems
• Channel management: SiteMinder, SynXis, and similar
• Market intelligence: CoStar/STR, Lighthouse, Kalibri Labs, TrustYou, and similar

• Experience with data modeling (attribution, relational databases) and data analysis tools (Python, R, SQL, JavaScript, HTML, CSS)
• Working knowledge of data privacy and governance requirements across the US, UK, and EU
• Strong ability to manage and present complex information to senior stakeholders
• Highly organized, with exceptional attention to detail
• Willingness to travel between the US and Europe and to hotel assets as required

Location and Compensation

• Location: London or Greenwich, CT, with regular collaboration across both offices
• Compensation: Competitive, commensurate with experience