gerald

Director of Group Sales
Gerald D. Lawton Jr.

Gerald is a 20 year hotel veteran. He began his career
in the personnel office of the Holiday Inn in Hilton Head, SC.
From there is moved to Marriott and served in the Sales office
of one of their resort time share operations also in Hilton Head.

He came to Atlanta in 1996 and his first foray into operations
was as a night auditor at a Days Inn which led to a Front Office
Managers position. He learned fast and well and went on to the
AmeriSuites on Peachtree first as a Front Office Manager and
then a year later earned the Asst. General Managers title.

In 2002 he accepted the position of Reservation Manager at the
Holiday Inn Select located at Turner Field in downtown Atlanta.
A position he excelled at and where he was directly responsible
for his team increasing rooms sold by one million dollars in one year.
The hotel had 399 guest rooms and generated 10 million in sales.

In 2004 he found that he missed working with clients on a personal
basis and so he accepted the position of Director of Sales at the
Holiday Inn Express Galleria – Atlanta. A smaller operation but
it afforded him the opportunity to do that which he loved best.
His success at this brought him a promotion to the Days Inn
on Canal Street in New Orleans a 216 room property with great
potential and of great importance to the company LETAP.

Due to Hurricane Katrina and his remarkable performance in dealing
with the problems and obstacles in that location during 2006 Gerald
was recognized as very valuable to the company and as such was
promoted to the position of Corporate Director of Group Sales.

Gerald has an Associates degree in Business Management from
South Carolina State.

He says he owes everything to his grandma “ If it had not been for my
grandmother who raised me and died at the proud age of 100…
I would never have gotten into the hotel business”.