JLL Global Hotels CEO To Depart
JLL’s top hospitality executive is leaving the firm to take a strategy role with a hotel brand embarking on a global expansion.
Accor has named Gilda Perez-Alvarado as its group chief strategy officer, tasked with overseeing the French hotel chain’s global hotel strategy, owner relations and strategic partnerships. Perez-Alvarado, currently the global CEO of the JLL's hotels and hospitality division, will assume her new role on Oct. 1 and report directly to Accor CEO Sébastien Bazin, according to a press release.
“I am confident that with her considerable skills and global hospitality expertise, Gilda will help us unlock the power of Accor’s strategy providing guests, owners and investors with an unrivaled hospitality experience,” Bazin said in a statement.
In 2021, JLL named Perez-Alvarado as its hospitality CEO, succeeding Mark Wynne-Smith, a position that allowed her to connect JLL’s capital markets team to global investors in Europe, the Americas and Asia as the sector emerged from the worst effects of the pandemic.
A graduate of Cornell University and IE Business School, Perez-Alvarado joined JLL in 2004 and spent two decades providing strategic advice to sovereign wealth funds, private equity, global hospitality brands and family offices, according to the release.
"We wish Gilda Perez-Alvarado all the best as she leaves JLL’s Hotels & Hospitality group to take on a new role with a JLL client," a JLL spokesperson said in a statement. "Over the last 19 years, she provided outstanding leadership and service to JLL and our clients along with the most talented team in the Hotels industry."
The Chicago-based brokerage giant said Wynne-Smith will represent the hotels practice on JLL's Global Capital Markets Board, while the triumverate of Kevin Davis in the Americas, Nihat Ercan in Asia-Pacific and Will Duffey in Europe, the Middle East and Africa will jointly lead the global hotels platform.
Accor, based just outside of Paris, is a global hospitality company with 5,400 properties with more than 40 hotel brands and 10,000 food and beverage venues, flex office and wellness facilities in 110 countries.
Accor is tapping Perez-Alvarado as the firm plans to open more than 1,200 new hotels in the next five years, with a focus on the Middle East and Asia, as travel demand and room pricing rebound from the pandemic, Reuters reported in June. Accor forecast 2023 revenue per room growth of 15% to 20%, Reuters reported, as travel demand hasn't abated despite rising interest rates and an uncertain global economy.
In May, Perez-Alvarado told CNBC’s Squawk Box that travelers are increasingly melding business travel with leisure travel.
“We’re going through a recalibration,” she said on the program. “If you actually look at the length of stay, that actually is higher. A lot of travelers are combining leisure with business or business with leisure. People are on the road. You all have been traveling. I’ve been traveling. Business-class cabins on airlines are very tight.”
UPDATE, AUG. 22, 3:05 P.M. ET: This story has been updated with a statement from JLL.
