Customer Spotlight: Avion Hospitality

About Avion Hospitality

As a young and fast-growing hotel management company, Avion Hospitality has focused on building trust with owners by executing well at the property level. As the portfolio expanded, the team quickly recognized that the way they managed revenue would need to scale just as deliberately. 

They needed a structure that could support new hotels as they came on board, while still maintaining consistent standards, quick decision-making, and alignment across teams.

For Michele Mainelli, VP of Revenue Management at Avion Hospitality, that meant finding a partner who could function as an extension of the internal team from day one. Avion chose to partner with Lighthouse Commercial Strategy Services to take on that responsibility.

Establishing revenue leadership from day one

Rather than assembling a revenue department asset by asset, Avion partnered with Lighthouse Commercial Strategy Services to act as its primary revenue management function. This allowed the company to move quickly while maintaining a consistent standard across the portfolio.

“As a new and quickly growing management company, CSS acted as our primary RM team,” Mainelli explains.

Without that foundation, each new hotel would have required new workflows, new reporting, and new points of coordination. Instead, the existing structure absorbed the growth. As new hotels came on board, coverage and decision-making stayed intact.

“Their ability to scale with us without missing a beat has been crucial to our growth and revenue performance,” she says.

Just as important was confidence in the people behind the service. Mainelli points to the depth of experience across the Lighthouse team as a key reason Avion was comfortable relying on them as a core part of the business.

“The quality of people and skill across the team gives us confidence.”

Aligning teams around a single commercial strategy

From Avion’s perspective, effective revenue management is not isolated to pricing alone. Commercial Strategy Services worked across departments, helping bring sales teams, general managers, and executive leadership into the same strategic conversation.

“They deliver more than just revenue management,” Mainelli says. “They facilitate alignment across all hotel stakeholders, along with digital strategy and marketing tactics to create a commercial strategy.”

That approach is especially valuable in a multi-brand environment. Rather than managing hotels in isolation or allowing brand-level revenue teams to compete within the same market, Avion wanted a portfolio-first view.

“Providing brand-agnostic service and revenue leaders to our multi-branded portfolio allows us to manage hotels as a complex,” Mainelli explains, “versus having brand revenue managers pit them against one another in the same market.”

Using data to focus on decisions

Technology also plays a key role in how Avion and Lighthouse work together. Lighthouse Pricing and Lighthouse Performance are embedded into the revenue workflow, allowing teams to focus less on data gathering and more on decision-making.

With access to clean, relevant insights, both Avion’s internal team and Lighthouse’s revenue managers can spend more time identifying opportunities and less time filtering through spreadsheets.

“Lighthouse Performance and Lighthouse Pricing allow our team and the RMs more time on digging and making revenue-impacting decisions instead of combing through irrelevant data.”

This becomes even more important as the portfolio grows. When onboarding new properties, structured audits and standardized processes help surface quick wins and create momentum early in the asset lifecycle.

“With our rapid growth, the onboarding process and audits allow us to address low-hanging fruit immediately and get things off the ground quickly and with impact when we take on new assets.”

A partnership built on trust and responsiveness

Beyond strategy and tools, the people behind the service are a defining factor. The collaborative relationship between Lighthouse revenue managers and hotel teams creates confidence, particularly when fast decisions are required.

Communication is clear, timely, and reliable, which is critical in an environment where market conditions can shift quickly.

Their reliability makes it easier to act with confidence, especially when timing matters.

“Communication is excellent,” says Michele. “RMs always confirm receipt of a request and provide a clear timeline for resolution. Often when prompt decisions are needed, we can count on Lighthouse expertise.”

Growing together

As Avion Hospitality continues to expand, Lighthouse remains closely tied to how the company thinks about revenue, alignment, and execution. The relationship is not seen as outsourced support, but as a shared commitment to long-term growth.

Asked why she would recommend Lighthouse to peers, Mainelli says that it’s simple:

“The team is really invested in our success. We grow together.”