When Aimbridge Hospitality embarked on a business-critical financial restructuring, CEO Craig Smith was only a few months into the job.
With a challenging macro-economic backdrop, high rates of inflation, pressure from hotel owners and a highly leveraged balance sheet, did Smith feel like he was facing the perfect storm?
“You had cashflow and liquidity pressures. In the context of attracting and marshalling capital, how did you do it?” asked Larry Kwon, managing director, Moelis, during a session at IHIF EMEA 2025 in March.
When the refinancing closed in January 2025, Aimbridge, the world’s largest third-party hotel operator, had converted $1.1 billion of debt into equity, plus raised $100m in capital.
Smith said that one factor in the success of the deal was his rigorously honest approach when speaking to Aimbridge’s lenders.
“I even said: ‘Hey, I’m six months into the job and here’s what I haven’t done well.’ Tell them what you’re good at but also what you’re not good at. It made our bankers say: ‘This is believable.’”
Secondly, AlixPartners served as financial advisors to Aimbridge and gave a “stamp of approval” on the company’s finances. In addition to AlixPartners and Moelis, there was a whole raft of external advisors.
Thirdly, Smith added: “Probably most importantly we said: ‘Here's what the future could be, but here's what needs to happen.’ We laid out that we had built a strategy for the company and had a very crisp and clean plan on how to get there.”
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Aimbridge manages more than 1,000 hotels and works with 300 ownership groups and 80 brands. Smith previously oversaw global operations at Marriott International, so he is no stranger to high level management and complex deals.
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