WASHINGTON, D.C.— Members of the American Hotel & Lodging Association looking to get the skinny on the proposed merger of the group’s Educational Institute with its fundraising arm, the American Hotel & Lodging Foundation, will have to trek to AH&LA’s annual spring conference, being held this year in Philadelphia. Although the game plan for the streamlining maneuver won’t be solidified until the April meeting, HOTEL BUSINESS® has learned one of the top two salaried positions will be eliminated, leaving a singular titular head with oversight for the new consolidated entity. That restructuring would involve EI president Anthony Marshall and AH&LF’s president Doug Viehland. “The association has been talking for awhile about merging the EI and the Foundation just to make sure we don’t have all these separate entities going in separate directions,” said Joseph McInerney, president/CEO of AH&LA. “It’s really to restructure the organization to make it more efficient.” Both groups are considered positive producers for the association, said McInerney. With some $12 million in annual revenue, “Tony got [EI] back into a positive cash flow,” he said. “The other one, the Foundation, is positive also, although it might show negative (numbers) because of how they bring the money in and the accounting.” For example, this year the AH&LF’s New Century Fund fundraising campaign brought in gifts in excess of $9 million; in 1996-97 it raised $6.4 million in a concentrated effort. “So it makes a lot a money and then over the next 10 years, the money’s coming in that had to be accounted for in the beginning,” said the CEO, noting the group’s more traditional efforts bring in donations ranging upwards of $50,000-$100,000 yearly. McInerney admitted there would be streamlining of staff as part of the overall plan to restructure and pare down AH&LA so it shares services internally. Cost efficiencies are another matter. McInerney said right now there wasn’t a clear picture of where the cost savings would be, but emphasized product services currently provided to the industry, such as EI’s courses, would not be curtailed or compromised. At the AH&LA’s Fall Conference held here earlier this week, McInerney said he met with the executive committees of EI and the AH&LF “to see if— conceptually— they had a problem with it [the merger],” which they did not. So in April, the boards of directors will be presented with a plan “of what we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it, and when we’re going to do it,” said the CEO. Part of that plan, he added, will be a cost analysis of “what are the expenses? Do we have to lay off people or change some people? What are the ongoing costs and what are the savings?” McInerney said the issue will be put to a vote at the meeting, although it doesn’t have to be. “We’re the only shareholder of both organizations, but we didn’t want to do it that way. We wanted everybody to be involved in the decision. If the boards did not want to agree to it, then we’d figure out something that was agreeable to the boards. This is a volunteer association, and we really have to take our lead from the volunteers,” each of whom is a board member representing AH&LA’s individual member states. Key players involved in the continuing talks are EI’s Marshall and chairman Tony Farris and AH&LF’s Viehland and chairman Steve Belmonte. In addition, McInerney said outgoing AH&LA chairman John Russell has agreed to work with him on behalf of the officers “to make this thing happen with the two chairman of the other organizations… that takes all of the personal involvement out of it, because if you dealt with the chief executives there might be some personal reasons that they don’t want to see it happen. We have to take that out of the whole equation.” What that equation will ultimately subtract is the cost of a salaried position. As to having an excess chairman, McInerney said he hadn’t even thought about it. “We would make sure that bot
AH&LA President/CEO Joseph McInerney