Plano, Texas-based management company Aimbridge Hospitality filed a lawsuit against competitor Avion Hospitality and its president and CEO, Robert Burg, alleging Avion senior leadership solicited confidential business information and trade secrets from Aimbridge employees to compete unfairly in the marketplace.
The lawsuit, filed Monday with the 471st District Court of Collin County, Texas, claims Burg contrived a “scheme to steal Aimbridge’s trade secrets, and then use those secrets to convince hotel owners to fire Aimbridge and hire Avion in its place.” The “scheme” resulted in Avion “reaping tens of millions of dollars in illgotten gains,” Aimbridge alleges.
A 16-year Aimbridge veteran, Burg most recently served as the company’s COO until he departed in 2021, the lawsuit claims, after another candidate was selected as CEO. Following his departure, Burg formed Plano-based Avion Hospitality and began “pursuing Aimbridge’s clients,” Aimbridge alleges in the lawsuit.
The ‘scheme’
In the lawsuit, Aimbridge claims Avion’s senior leaders, including Burg, approached and encouraged Aimbridge employees to provide “highly confidential reports, data and analytics concerning the financial performance of specific hotels that Avion wished to target.” Said leadership persuaded Aimbridge employees to share the data with job opportunities at Avion, the lawsuit alleges.
Burg used the “illegally obtained information” to “persuade hotel owners to fire Aimbridge as their manager and hire Avion instead,” Aimbridge claims in the suit. Then, as a “reward for their complicity in the scheme,” Avion hired the Aimbridge employees who had given them the company’s trade secrets, according to the suit.
Aimbridge first became aware of Avion’s activities “in or around March 2024,” when the company discovered email communications that Burg and others at Avion had with Aimbridge employees on email accounts hosted by Aimbridge, the lawsuit details.
One of the employees in question is former Aimbridge regional vice president of operations Faisal Kamal.
In early 2022, the suit says, Kamal provided Burg with data regarding Aimbridge’s management fees and financial performance for five properties: the Embassy Suites by Hilton College Station, the Embassy Suites by Hilton Houston West-Katy, the Embassy Suites by Hilton Houston Energy Corridor, the Fairfield Inn & Suites Houston East Energy Corridor and the Home2 Suites by Hilton Houston Energy Corridor.
Data provided included RevPAR; gross operating profit; breakdowns of revenue, expenses and profits relating to rooms, food and beverage and other property facilities; management fees; and net income, according to the lawsuit.
The five hotels subsequently terminated their hotel management contracts with Aimbridge, effective April 30, 2022. And all five are now operated by Avion, the lawsuit notes.
On May 1, 2022, Kamal resigned from Aimbridge, according to the suit. Within days, Avion announced Kamal’s appointment as vice president of operations. Several other former Aimbridge employees are implicated as participating in similar activities in the lawsuit.
Burg’s tenure
The “scheme” comes after Burg’s nearly 20-year tenure at Aimbridge, during which time he was “entrusted with access to all of Aimbridge’s confidential information about financial matters, business strategy and operations, and relationships with hotel owners,” according to the lawsuit.
Burg was first hired to Aimbridge in 2003 as senior vice president of operations. In 2008, he was promoted to executive vice president and COO. And in 2018, Burg was further promoted to president and COO.
According to the lawsuit, Burg departed Aimbridge in 2021 after he was in contention but not selected for the company’s new CEO, a change that came following Aimbridge’s merger with Interstate. Mike Deitemeyer, Interstate’s president and CEO before the merger, became CEO instead.
Seeking retribution
“We are deeply disappointed that a trusted individual would go to such lengths to harm the company to create great personal benefit for himself and his new entity,” an Aimbridge spokesperson said in a statement obtained by Hotel Dive, referring to Burg. “We initiated the lawsuit to protect our company and our stakeholder groups, including our associates, who are impacted by this breach of trust.”
Aimbridge seeks “monetary damages to compensate it for the serious financial harm that Burg and Avion have caused to date,” according to the lawsuit. Aimbridge alleges this amount is upwards of tens of millions of dollars.
In November 2023, Deitemeyer announced he was stepping down as CEO. Former Marriott International executive Craig Smith was named the company’s new leader in February.
Avion Hospitality could not be reached for comment.
