PHOENIX— It doesn’t take long for a visitor entering Best Western International’s Phoenix headquarters to find Jim Evans’ office. A brief walk through a horticulturally tailored courtyard that leads up a few steps to the company’s Spanish colonial-style headquarters here enables an almost immediate access into the president/CEO’s working quarters, after a quick stop past a friendly executive assistant or two. Which is the way Jim Evans wants it. Throughout the course of a day, executives whom Evans appointed or were here when he arrived at Best Western either casually pop their heads into his office to ask the executive a quick question, or to go through company files easily accessed just outside of his own file-filled office. In fact, easy access is the name of the game when it comes to Evans’ philosophy in running Best Western. He prefers open, two-way communication, whether it’s with associates at corporate headquarters, or with members of the worldwide, 4,000-member hotel association. It’s not a mantra into which Evans had to grow. He knew, prior to arriving at the company three years ago— with a resume that included executive operations positions for The Promus Corp. and Doubletree Hotel Corp., as well as a 21-year stint with Hyatt Hotels— that his mission was to lead a hotel company whose bylaws were based on the premise that property owners vote on issues affecting their brand, rather than franchisees who received their mandates from a corporate entity. As a result, Evans never had the notion of running Best Western from an ivory tower, tucked away in an upstairs corner office where he could privately determine what brand standards would be right for Best Western. “I didn’t come in with anything in mind other than I knew that any democratically based organization was going to require open and frequent communications,” Evans told HOTEL BUSINESS®. “It’s all about trust issues. We want people to know we are here to represent their best interests. You won’t get rid of all the politics— you can’t. That is true of any game. I don’t find that intimidating. I find that at times frustrating, but for the most part it keeps us on our toes.” It’s always been that way for Evans at Best Western, whose membership was voting down a ballot proposing a fees increase as he was virtually coming on board three years ago. The vote of no-confidence stemmed in large part from the fact that the company was $25 million in debt, and financially strapped. Tough Message “That has been the only real difficult message I received from our members, but frankly, in retrospect I think it was appropriate,” said Evans, who said he worked hand-in-hand with the Best Western membership board to clean up the budget. It wasn’t time ill spent for the new CEO. “I understood within a few weeks where every penny was, and I also began to understand what the most valued services were to our members,” he said, noting that within months, a survey of property owners also gave him a clear handle on what members did and didn’t like. “At the time it was very awkward. I was at the job less than a month when we got that message back from our members, but boy, oh, boy, I’ll tell you, we worked night and day and the payback has been very rewarding in that I really do feel, based on members’ feedback, that they really do like what is happening in the company and want us to stay the course and continue to become a stronger, more competitive product.” Much of that good feedback likely comes from the fact that BWI today is debt free and has cash on the books, according to Amnupam Narayan, senior vp/global strategy and CFO. Members do feel that Evans, and the executive team he has assembled, have made indeed made a difference. Ken Smotherman, a BWI hotel owner in Waco, TX, who this year chairs the BWI board, noted that the membership overall “feels like we’ve got by far the best senior management team we’ve ever had at Best Western.” Few would arg
