A RE-ORGANISATION of Toronto-based Fairmont Holdings, which now sprouts a freshly registered corporate entity and logo, FRHI Hotels & Resorts, sees Aiden McAuley rising as FRHI’s senior vice president-operations Europe, based in Zurich, and Wayne Buckingham joining as senior vice president-Asia, based in Singapore.
McAuley is now responsible for FRHI Hotels & Resorts’ 30 hotels in Europe across the three brands, Raffles, Fairmont and Swissôtel. McAuley, who assumed his role December 1, was managing director of Fairmont Singapore Swissôtel The Stamford Singapore and regional vice president-Asia/Pacific of Swissôtel Hotels & Resorts. His successor in Singapore, Tom Meyer, will be on board in January.
Buckingham, McAuley’s counterpart for the Asia region, is understood to be joining in January. He served as senior EVP at Thai Charoen Corp TCC Land Leisure and was a former long-time Starwood Hotels & Resorts’ senior executive.
The new organisation is understood to be region-driven than brand-driven, sharing the same system for sales, HR and IT, among others. Meinhard Huck, who championed Swissôtel Hotels & Resorts as president, based in Zurich, retired in October. It is not clear yet if the roles of president-Raffles Hotels & Resorts, held by Peter French, based in Singapore, and president, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, held by Jennifer Fox, officially based in Toronto, will continue in the future, given the move to operate the three brands under the single FRHI entity. FRHI is to issue an official statement soon.
