Choice Hotels International appointed Vikas Bhalla to the newly created role of chief transformation officer. Reporting directly to president/CEO Patrick Pacious, Bhalla will advance the company’s data-driven culture and lead the corporate strategy, business transformation and data analytics teams.
"After an extensive search, we're confident Vikas is the right leader to help position our brands and offerings to appeal to the customer of the future, while expanding the profitability driven by Choice's platform business," Pacious said in a statement. "As the chief transformation officer, Vikas will further advance our culture of data-informed decision-making, which is core to our business strategy and will remain so in the years ahead."
Bhalla brings more than 20 years of experience shaping business strategies for large corporations. In his most recent role as VP of strategy and business development, pricing and analytics at CVS Health, he worked as the company’s core retail strategist and drove both identification and execution of its multi-year growth initiatives. Before that, he led several large-scale transformation projects as a principal at Strategy&.
As of June 30, Choice Hotels International had more than 7,000 hotels with nearly 570,000 rooms in more than 40 countries and territories.