Rinkesh and Mitesh Patel, co-founders of RAM Hotels—which develops, owns and manages more than two dozen Marriott, Hilton and IHG hotels in Georgia and Alabama—have tapped hotel veteran Jonathan D. Bogatay to be president of the company effective Feb. 1. Bogatay will oversee the company's strategic, operational, tactical, financial and cultural expectations.
RAM Hotels was co-founded in 2002 when the brothers and their parents, all having emigrated to the U.S. from India four years earlier, purchased their first hotel in Phenix City, Ala. Five years later, RAM Hotels was approved to develop its first Hilton brand and now has a portfolio of 26 open hotels and 10 more in development throughout Alabama and Georgia. The company, based in Columbus, Ga., owns and manages its hotels. Rinkesh Patel is the company’s CEO; Mitesh Patel is COO.
Bogatay spent two decades as CEO of Wisconsin-based North Central Group. Before joining NCG in 1999, Bogatay held several senior management positions with various lodging owners, operators and developers, and early on in his career worked for Promus Hotel Corp., which is now part of Hilton. He currently serves as president of the Courtyard Franchise Advisory Council and is an ad hoc member of the Hampton Brand Owner Advisory Council. He is also a member of the Lodging Industry Investment Council, and was chairman of the Hilton Garden Inn Franchise Advisory Council. He is a member of Hampton Hotels’ “Make it Hampton” Brand Strategy and Operations Committee and a member of the board of directors of the Greater Madison, Wis., Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. He is also a past member of the AHLA Council of Inn & Suites and served as a member of the organization’s Legislative Action Committee.