Dear Keith and Jeff,

Congratulations. What you are stepping into on April 1st is not merely a title change — it is a mandate. Sonesta's board has entrusted you with the stewardship of 1,200 properties, tens of thousands of employees, and a brand that has quietly endured for 85 years while many of its competitors built louder but not necessarily better. That kind of longevity is earned. And it is yours to extend — or transform.

I am Carter Hill, Founder and CEO of Genesis AI, and I am writing to you not as a vendor, not as a consultant, and certainly not as someone who found your names on a press release. I am writing because we have spent months immersed in Sonesta — and what we found deserves a conversation.

Before we built anything, we listened. We analyzed 3,681 guest reviews across your portfolio — the praise, the frustrations, the unmet expectations, the moments of genuine delight. We benchmarked 22 of your hotels against industry leaders. We studied 10 world-class hospitality chains to understand what separates good from extraordinary. We examined 20+ of your key markets with the granularity of a local operator.

These are not marketing talking points. They are real names, real moments, captured in real reviews by real guests. Your Culture of Caring — built on integrity, authenticity, quality, and genuine concern — is not aspirational language. It is operational reality at the property level. That is extraordinarily rare. And it is also extraordinarily undermonetized.

You are inheriting a brand at the precise confluence of three once-in-a-generation forces. Each one alone is significant. Together, they represent a window that will not reopen.

• Leadership transition. New leadership brings new latitude. The moves you make in your first 120 days will signal to your team, your owners, and your guests what Sonesta stands for in its next era. Strategic partners selected now become part of that signal.
• FIFA World Cup 2026. June 11 through July 19. Eleven host cities. Over 5 million visitors. We have modeled the incremental revenue opportunity at $120M+ across your relevant portfolio — and that number assumes you move before your competitors do. The window for dynamic pricing, package bundling, and loyalty acceleration closes months before the first match kicks off.
• The AI transformation window. Marriott has committed $1.1 billion to technology. Wyndham has deployed 250 AI agents across operations. Hilton has launched its AI Travel Planner. The question is not whether AI will reshape hospitality — it already is. The question is whether Sonesta leads that transformation or spends the next five years catching up to it.

This letter is not a proposal to start work. It is a report on work already done. We do not arrive at conversations empty-handed.

We have identified $198M+ in incentives, grants, technology credits, and partnership structures available to Sonesta. We have built a complete technology assessment — mapping every major AI and hospitality platform against your current infrastructure, with implementation sequencing and ROI modeling. We have developed a brand cohesion strategy that honors what makes individual Sonesta properties exceptional while building toward a unified loyalty narrative.

The hospitality industry is at an inflection point. The brands that move with clarity and conviction in the next 18 months will define the competitive landscape for a decade. Sonesta has everything it needs to lead — a genuine culture that guests trust, a scale that creates real leverage, and now, in the two of you, leadership with the mandate to decide boldly.

We built this because we believe in what Sonesta can become. We would be honored to be part of how you get there.