Jim Darter

As a lifelong hotelier and business leader, Jim takes great pride in his ability to effectively utilize and balance strategic thinking, or IQ, and resonant leadership, or EQ, to lead Sandpiper Hospitality. These complimentary abilities combine to provide Sandpiper with the horsepower, collectively through his team and his strategies, it needs to maximize returns for its investors. At the end of the day, Jim knows that, “Our strategic decisions must drive our hotels to earn better than expected returns for our investors. Period.”

Jim’s leadership of the organization takes many forms, including; a resolute focus on adding and keeping genuine talent with the right abilities and mindset, setting a vision that inspires and energizes the leaders in the organization, nailing the strategic planning for the company and the individual hotels and obsessing over results, returns and the related trends. The ROI is clear and evident……internally with associate growth and development, customer-facing through guest satisfaction, and financially for the investors and owners. “We have to earn it every day, in every way,” according to Jim.

Before joining Sandpiper, Jim’s perpetual drive served him well in Denver, CO as a Senior Vice President with Sage Hospitality for fourteen years and more recently as Chief Operating Officer for Gold Key/PHR. Jim also served as a Regional Director with IHG franchise operations after learning the hotel business on property with various leadership positions at a number of award-winning hotels in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Washington DC and South Florida. At home, he is perpetually surrounded by his “girls,” including his wife and two teenage daughters.

Tasked with executing the company’s growth plans, Jim is equally focused on today’s results and tomorrow’s opportunities. These parallel paths have set Sandpiper up for an explosive growth period in the coming years. “Our continued growth and expansion of brands and geography is coming as a result of our ability to perform. According to Jim, “Our dedication to excellence in people, strategy and performance is our formula to success. We play to win!”