Washington, (September 3, 2014) - Long-time industry veteran Bob Hazard will be honored with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit (ALIS), January 26-28, 2015, in Los Angeles.

Hazard served as chairman, president, and CEO of Choice Hotels International from 1980 to 1996. During that period, he and his team grew Choice from a regional group of 339 Quality Inns into a six-brand, global hotel company with more than 3,800 inns, hotels, and resorts, offering over 330,000 guest rooms in 43 countries. Additionally, the value of Choice Hotels rose from $15 million in 1980 to over a billion dollars when the company went public in 1996 on the NY Stock Exchange.

Hazard is credited in the hotel industry as The Father of Hotel Segmentation. Under his leadership, Choice became the first hotel company to offer multiple brand names at different price points with the introduction of limited-service, luxury-budget, and new construction Comfort Inns in 1980. This was followed by the addition of Sleep Inns, Comfort Suites, Quality Suites, and Clarion Inns, Hotels and Resorts, and later Econolodge and Rodeway Inns. This same multi-brand strategy later became the preferred business model for other hotel franchisors like Marriott, Hilton, Starwood, InterContinental, Carlson, and Wyndham. Additional Choice innovations included becoming the first hotel company to set aside a mandatory block of "no smoking" rooms in all its hotels, and Sleep Inns as the first brand to use magnetic cards to replace metal room keys.

Hazard served for seven years as CEO of Best Western International prior to joining Choice. His management team grew that organization from 800 aging roadside motels to over 2,900 hotels, inns, and resorts worldwide, surpassing Holiday Inns as the largest lodging chain in the world in number of inns. Hazard was actively involved in the American Hotel & Lodging Association and the only two-time winner of the New York Hospitality Conference Silver Plate Award.

"We are very pleased to be presenting the ALIS Lifetime Achievement Award to Bob Hazard. He not only succeeded in growing great companies, but he changed the lodging industry forever with his keen understanding of market segmentation and creating products that best serve them," said Jim Burba, ALIS conference chair.

Co-hosted by the American Hotel & Lodging Association and Burba Hotel Network (BHN), the two-and-a-half-day ALIS event features an extensive array of seminars and panels hosted by leading experts and investors discussing important trends and identifying new opportunities. The conference attracts the lodging industry's leading hotel executives, investors, lenders, developers and the professional advisory community. Proceeds from ALIS benefit the educational, research, and training missions of the American Hotel & Lodging Education Foundation (AH&LEF), AH&LA's nonprofit affiliate. For information on the Foundation, visit www.ahlef.org.

Early registration is $1,875 and ends September 30. Online registration is available via the ALIS Website. For general event information and sponsorship opportunities, contact BHN Conference Manager Jodi Braverman at jbraverman@burba.com.

# # #