Jason Abdullah, complex director of marketing for Hilton’s managed properties in Orange County, Calif., has spent the better part of the past year overseeing marketing efforts around the renovation of the Hilton Anaheim, Calif.—a project he has found especially meaningful.
His interest in marketing stems from a childhood love of storytelling, he recalled. In a high school business class, he learned that telling a story differently from the way anyone else did encouraged people to pay attention. “Marketing is all about changing the message every so often,” he said. “You can't go out with the same message, the same positioning, the same statements. … You are always changing your approach to be a little bit more creative, and seeing if you can take it another level.”
After earning his bachelor’s degree in business administration from California State University, Northridge, Abdullah joined the team at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, starting as a marketing coordinator for the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina before taking on sales, marketing and revenue analyst responsibilities for more hotels in the area. By late 2010, he was promoted to New York City as a revenue and sales analyst for 56 hotels.
In the early- and mid-2010s, as the upcoming Marriott acquisition took shape, Abdullah became a consultant for the company as a whole. “They were consolidating their sales offices, consolidating their expertise, buttoning up their systems and processes,” he recalled. And “When you're being acquired … you never know what's going to happen. You never know if you're going to be phased out. I didn't want to really take that risk.”
A New Perspective
Rather than worry about his role following the acquisition, he decided to return to California and join the team at Expedia as a market manager. “When I was with Starwood doing the analysis for 56 hotels, [online travel agencies] were stealing more and more share of the business,” he said. He was intrigued by the concept of OTAs and how they attracted so many customers. “How does it work on advertising? How does their digital marketing work?”
In his new role, Abdullah learned “everything” about the OTA business. “I completely understood how their technology works, how their distribution systems work, how they work with hotels, how they run offers, how their connectivity to hotel systems work.” With 170 hotels ranging from boutique to big box under his account, he saw how OTAs work at scale. “It changed my perspective on OTAs and why they're such a valuable tool for the hotel industry,” he said, arguing that OTAs provide their member hotels with exposure to a much broader audience than they might otherwise find. This, he added, has helped drive growth in both occupancy and rate, especially for smaller hotels with more limited distribution networks.
Abdullah joined Hilton in 2017 as senior digital marketing manager for a cluster of hotels in California’s Orange County, and after a yearlong break with Pacific Hospitality Group, he returned to be complex director of marketing for Hilton’s managed properties in Orange County. He has focused in particular on the Hilton Anaheim, which has been undergoing a $200 million renovation since the summer of 2024.
Opportunity and Potential
After spending so many years working in hospitality, Abdullah feels confident in knowing when a hotel can be successful. “Of my entire career, Hilton Anaheim has the most potential of any hotel I've ever worked with,” he said. Specifically, he cited the property’s size (1,574 guestrooms), the longevity of its team members (some have been there since the hotel opened in 1984) and its location adjacent to the convention center and in between San Diego and Los Angeles. “It had so much potential and opportunity with this renovation that I knew, if I can get in at the beginning, convince our owners to invest the money they needed to in the marketing and the advertising to reposition [and] rebrand it, I knew it could be extremely successful,” he said.
As part of the repositioning and rebranding, he continued, the team is “reintroducing every element of the hotel—and I get to be a part of all of that.” The opportunity to reimagine a 40-year-old hotel was especially appealing, he added. “I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could do it.” The property has remained open throughout the renovation, and Abdullah is particularly impressed with how the team has worked with guests while also working around the necessary changes. “How do you navigate those guest reviews? How do you navigate those spaces that are closed? How do you navigate those guests that are disrupted or interrupted by it?” he asked rhetorically. The solution, he added, is “a massive amount of coordination and communication [among] every single party,” including the contractors and internal teams. The end result is “one of the best renovations … I've ever seen.”
Hilton Anaheim
Opening year: 1984
Number of guestrooms: 1,574
Management company: Hilton Worldwide Holdings
This article was originally published in the July/August edition of Hotel Management magazine. Subscribe here.