Hotel Marketing Group Plans a Public Offering

Hospitality Marketing Concepts Inc., which runs customer membership programs for about 315 high-end hotels worldwide, filed plans for an initial public offering worth as much as $48 million.

The Irvine-based company provides hotels with marketing targeted to regular customers, who in turn pay an annual fee for perks such as discounts on rooms and food.

These membership programs help hotels build relationships with existing customers and attract new ones, according to the registration filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company runs membership programs for four- and five-star hotels in 160 cities, including New York, Rome, London, Madrid, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Warsaw and Caracas, the filing said.

“Our goal is continued expansion,” said Philip Hirsch, who joined the company in April as chief financial officer. “This is a good time from a market standpoint to raise some capital. And being a public company is increasingly important in a global marketplace.”

Three brothers started Hospitality Marketing, and run the company. Mokhtar Ramadan, 42, is chairman and chief executive. Fadi Ramadan, 37, is in charge of the company’s operations in North America, while Marwan Ramadan, 39, runs the business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the filing said.

Sandra Case, 36, runs the company’s Asia/Pacific operations.

“We’ll set up a marketing program for a hotel and set up a local telemarketing operation” to sell memberships to local businesses, Hirsch, 45, said. “When the businessman in Singapore travels to London, he can stay with another one of our hotels.”

The company also is beginning to offer its members other services. Last month, it started selling international calling cards under an agreement with Sprint Corp. It also will market credit cards with Standard Chartered Bank in Malaysia, Hirsch said.

Hospitality Marketing didn’t include the number of shares it will sell to new investors, or the expected price range. These details will be disclosed in future filings with the SEC.

The filing also didn’t indicate how much of the company the Ramadans will control after the IPO. Hospitality Marketing has applied to list its shares on the Nasdaq market under the symbol HMCC.