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Arlington Hotel Names Alan Sims General Manager

2 min read

The Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa of Hot Springs on Wednesday named Alan Sims general manager, succeeding longtime GM Bob Martorana.

Sims joined the hotel, Arkansas’ oldest, in September as vice president of sales. He’d previously held a similar post for six years with the Little Rock Convention & Visitors Bureau. Sims has also led sales efforts for visitors bureaus in Dallas and Oklahoma City.

The hotel named Sims during a ceremony in which Martorana presented Sims with a symbolic “key to the hotel.”

The move comes about five months after Southwest Hotels Inc., the hotel’s owners and operators since 1954, sold the property to Sky Capital Group LP, led by Al Rajabi, who also has an interest in a company that owns and operates the Four Points Sheraton in Little Rock.

The 404,679-SF, 485-room hotel, which opened in 1924, is undergoing what’s estimated to be a $43 million renovation expected to last five to seven years. Earlier this year, the city had formally notified the hotel to make certain repairs or face closure. Sky Capital hired Cromwell Architects Engineers of Little Rock to study the city’s areas of concern, and the city later revised its timeline, allowing the owners to submit a plan to address the problems.

Martorana had been GM since 2009. During his time at the hotel, the Arlington remodeled and renovated the 45,000-SF convention center and its historic Crystal Ballroom.

“Sharon and I love Hot Springs, the Arlington and its wonderful team of customer-dedicated people,” Martorana said in a news release. “We will continue to be active citizens of our beloved city and we thank so many people for making our time at the Arlington so memorable.”

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