A former Holiday Inn chief executive has been tapped to lead the newly-launched Olive Tree Hotels & Resorts, an initiative of New York-based Olive Tree Holdings that will focus on acquiring and strategically repositioning US hotel assets.

Hospitality industry veteran Ken Hamlet will serve as Chief Executive Officer of the new venture, which is expected to deploy $500 million of equity capital over the next three years in select-service hotels and opportunistic full-service assets.

The firm is entering the sector at a particularly interesting time for investors in the space, as pandemic-related challenges have reshaped consumer demand and dispersed working professionals away from traditionally dense urban cores.  Olive Tree intends to prioritize reconfiguring hotel properties to accommodate the needs of a growing mobile workforce through technological improvements, attractive workspaces, and energy-efficiency upgrades, the firm said, and will draw on data-driven analyses of market opportunities in tertiary and secondary cities.