Meet Alex Mai

Alex has more than 25 years of practical, hands-on experience with hotels, resorts, brand management, real estate, and operation. He has worked on hundreds of hotel assets, negotiations and hotels performances across the United States, Latin America & Caribbean.

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In 2020 he founded ALBA Hospitality. Alex oversees the firm and he is very involved in defining the forward outlook that establishes how the company manages its clients to maximize results, strategic asset positioning, management contract negotiations, interacting with senior-level brand and management executives on behalf of ALBA Hospitality and its clients.

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Prior to founding ALBA Hospitality, Alex has held various management roles for Hilton Hotels Corporation during his 13 years tenure with the company. From managing the relationships with owners in the North East/Central US and Latin America for Hilton’s Focused-Service Brands, to oversee the performance of 60 Hilton’s Full-Service Brands in Latin America & Caribbean. For the past 4 years, in his role of Director of Development for Hilton, Alex successfully negotiated and executed +20 hotels, totaling +2,200 rooms between luxury, full, collections, all suites and focused services brands.

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Alex has participated, both as panelist and moderator, in various Hospitality and Real Estate events such as, CHRIS & HOLA, Real Estate Business Summits, Mexico Hotel & Tourism Investment Conference, Hunter, IMEX.

Based outside Washington, DC, his focus with ALBA Hospitality is on creating meaningful relationship with past and new hotel owners, resulting in outstanding bottom-line outcomes. 

Alex over the years, during his many trips, has developed a keen sense of the differences in the business culture in Latin America. Because he speaks Spanish and Italian fluently, he understands how to utilize a global approach while negotiating deals and managing hotel teams and their performances “It is important to understand different cultures, owners outside of the US have different needs and conduct business in a different way. Sales calls are handled differently, and their hotels have a larger number of employees compared to US hotels”

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While his Latin American experience is helpful, his years serving in the North East/Central region in the US have given him valuable experience for working with various investors and management companies, where he still maintains strong business relationships.

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Alex has a truly global perspective, as he is originally from Italy, has traveled all over the world and moved to the US in 1995. His passion for the hospitality industry developed early. While still in school, he began working, at the front desk and as a night auditor for the beautiful Hotel Garden in Siena, Italy, an old Italian villa. From there he moved on to serve in different roles for both full and limited service hotels. He worked as an AGM and then a GM for several US chains such as Hilton, IHG, Sheraton and as Director of Operations for The Melrose Hotel in Washington DC, until he joined Hilton Corporate Headquarters in 2007.