Hospitality IT · Western North Carolina
Your brand mandated the technology.
Someone still has to run the project.
I manage brand-driven technology work for independent and small-group hotel owners — refreshes, lock systems, network builds, and PMS transitions — from the ownership side of the table. Not as a vendor trying to sell you hardware.
Why this keeps happening
A PIP is not a suggestion, and it arrives with a date on it.
Franchise brands run Property Improvement Plans on roughly a six-to-eight year cycle, and those plans increasingly bundle mandatory technology line items. Hilton’s Connected Room program alone is cited across the industry at $1,500–$3,000 per room in technology investment.
That is not a discretionary upgrade an owner can defer until it feels affordable. It is a compliance requirement with a deadline attached — which means the real question was never whether to do the work. It is who is going to scope it, price it, sequence it, and hold six vendors to a date.
A group with forty properties has a corporate IT department for that. If you run one hotel, or four, you have yourself and whoever answers the phone.
What I handle
Six kinds of work, all of them deadline-shaped.
- 01
Brand conversions & openings
End-to-end IT and vendor coordination for flag changes and new openings — opening-date-driven timelines, temporary server setups, and PMS cutover sequencing that has to land on the day it says it will.
- 02
PIP technology scoping
Reading the brand-issued Property Improvement Plan, separating the technology line items from the rest, pricing them honestly, and coordinating the remediation vendors who bring the property back into standard.
- 03
Electronic lock systems
Full-cycle management of door lock replacements and upgrades with Dormakaba and ASSA ABLOY/VingCard — RFQs, site surveys, contract review, install scheduling, and Digital Key configuration.
- 04
Guest & back-of-house networks
RFQ and installation management for property WiFi and network infrastructure, held to the brand’s actual published signal standards rather than the installer’s word for it, plus network edge and firewall work.
- 05
PMS transitions & acquisition IT diligence
The systems side of buying a hotel: what has to change in the PMS, payment processing, and network stack before and after closing — scoped before you sign, not discovered afterward.
- 06
Vendor & contract management
Reading and negotiating scope, chasing the paperwork, managing procurement forms, and holding vendors to the install timeline they committed to. The unglamorous part that decides whether a project lands.
The difference
I have sat on your side of this table.
Most people offering to help with hotel technology are selling something — locks, access points, a PMS, a managed services contract. My background is owner-side project management: running brand-mandated refreshes, lock upgrades, network builds, and PMS cutovers across IHG, Marriott, Hilton, and Best Western properties, as the person accountable to the owner rather than to a quota.
That shows up in small, expensive ways. Knowing that a brand’s current WiFi signal standard is buried in a PDF the vendor is not quoting against. Knowing what a 209-door lock installation actually takes when it is tied to a hard opening date. Knowing which line items on a PIP are genuinely mandatory and which are the vendor’s interpretation of mandatory.
- IHGHoliday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Staybridge Suites
- MarriottFour Points by Sheraton, Delta Hotels
- HiltonDoubleTree, Connected Room, Digital Key
- Best WesternAcquisitions and ownership transitions
Coverage
On-site, within about two hours.
Based in Hendersonville, North Carolina. This work does not go well over email alone — site surveys, install supervision, and cutover days want somebody physically in the building. I keep the radius honest for that reason.
- Asheville & Western North Carolina
- Upstate South Carolina
- East Tennessee
- North Georgia
Have a PIP, a conversion, or an acquisition coming?
The most useful first conversation is usually the cheapest one: what the brand is asking for, when it is due, and what it should realistically cost. Email me and we will start there.
aaron@hoteltech.consulting