Six Continents Names Former Hilton Exec As COO/Americas

ATLANTA— Stevan Porter, a 12-year Hilton Hotels veteran, has been named COO for the Americas region at Six Continents Hotels. He replaces Richard Solomons, who was promoted to CFO/Six Continents Hotels several months ago. Porter will begin his new role at Six Continents on November 5 and will report directly to John Sweetwood, President, Six Continents Hotels/Americas. He formerly served as senior vp/Hilton Hotels and evp/hotel operations for Hilton Hotels. In his new role, Porter will have strategic and tactical responsibility for the company’s owned and managed estate throughout Canada, the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America. In an interview with HOTEL BUSINESS®, Porter said he hopes to “create a business practice on the operations side that mirrors what the company has done on the franchising side.” As a competitor working at Hilton, Porter said he watched Six Continents carefully over the years to identify their strengths and weaknesses, so he is coming into this new position with a unique view of how the company operates. While at Hilton, Porter helped integrate the former Promus hotel brands, including Doubletree Hotels, Embassy Suites and Hampton Inn & Suites, following its merger with Hilton. In a fairly short time period, approximately one year, the companies were able to create a corporate brand name umbrella, under which the lodging brands had their own identity. Porter said he plans to take a similar approach at Six Continents in his new role. “We will work to recognize the enterprise value [of Six Continents]and apply that to each one of the brands separately. Six Continents has a lot of great resources— a powerful reservations system, worldwide distribution and a great loyalty program. We need to apply those enterprise values to each of the brands,” he said. “I want to make sure we’ve got a broad umbrella for management that makes sense on an individual brand basis.” Porter said he is excited to be joining a company with strong brands that is so well positioned for significant growth in the future. “Steve’s extensive management experience across all types of hotels will be invaluable in his new role. Since our owned and managed portfolio includes Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites, Crowne Plaza and Inter-Continental hotels, we need a COO who understands the dynamics of each of those segments, and Steve has that scope of experience,” said Sweetwood. For his first few months on the job, Porter will commute back and forth from California, where he currently lives with his wife and children. He plans to move to the Atlanta region, where he will be based, within the next several months.