Stepping into Hospitality: Alex’s New Role Supporting Hotel IT

Here we have an excellent interview with Alexandra McArthur, Senior Account Manager, as she transitions into a new hospitality-focused role, highlighting how the position differs from previous responsibilities and what motivated the move.

Alex reflects on the challenges of large‑scale operational change, particularly the successful conversion of 29 hotel sites within tight timescale and credits the achievement to a highly determined, collaborative team.

Throughout the discussion, Alex emphasises the importance of teamwork, calling out close working relationships with colleagues such as Kimberly and Mhairi, and noting the positive impact of experienced specialists brought in from Marriott Hotels. A recurring theme is Alex’s passion for customer interaction and problem‑solving, which continues to drive enthusiasm and fulfilment in the role!

Thank you for taking time out with us today. It’s very exciting. We just wanted to talk to you a little bit about your new role, what it is, what you do and how does it differ from the old one?

My new role is Senior Account Manager – Hospitality. This means I focus on the hospitality clients that we work with. There’s no such thing as a day-to-day in this role, because even though it’s all hotels, for one hotel you’re dealing with a network upgrade, another hotel you’re sending out new managed print devices to them. For other hotels we’re consulting and delivering on their overall digital transformation such as digital displays, and media management software.

I’m enjoying being involved at a more technical level, and the amount that I’m learning is fantastic because I love to learn. I’m a wee bit of a geek. I love to learn new stuff, so seeing how it all hangs together, I’m really enjoying it. It was a little bit bittersweet though because I’ve been at Aspen Solutions for over 6 years and I’d built up some really good relationships with a lot of the customers that I dealt with on a daily basis. I think that just shows what I give to my position here, now and going forward.

How did you end up in this position and why did you want to do it?

I’ve worked with hotels in the UK, Europe and Africa for years providing their vital infrastructure through one of our customers who is an IT consultant to a number of Hotel chains. I knew that Aspen Solutions was well placed to provide a lot more of our services to these customers. In the early part of 2025, we had the opportunity to show what more we could offer beyond that established relationship. I believe we got to throw our hat into the ring because of the good solid work that we’ve done on procurement and infrastructure and we’ve always been approachable if clients had challenges. Now we’re not only providing the infrastructure and solutions, but we are actively managing their IT environment, from Support to Cyber Security and more.

The feedback we’ve had from them since doing the onboarding has been so positive. The industry’s reaction to us trying to flip 29 sites in such a small period of time was “absolutely not – you cannot do that”, so that was a challenge and we faced it head on

Aspen Solutions is such a determined team – everybody was like, “that’s what needs to be done, so let’s get it done”. Obviously headed up by Mhairi [Beeby, Head of Commercial], she just knew what was required and it just all fell together. We got all 29 sites converted in the timescale that we promised: we delivered on and learned a lot along the way.

With the new role, is there anything in particular you’re excited about for 2026?

We’ve just brought on new sites as managed services customers, which is really great. So 2026 has started with a bang, and I’m excited to see how far we can take this. I can’t think of another business similar to us that is doing that same thing, so it’s something that makes us stand out a wee bit from the crowd and I think that’s really motivating. We’ve proven that we can do it really well, and I’m just excited to see what else is going to happen this year.

You’ve mentioned already, obviously there’s no such thing as a day-to-day in hospitality, but is there anything else about hospitality in particular that gets you excited about coming to work in the morning?

I absolutely love the team that we work with. I work really closely with Kimberly [Hearns, Technical Business Analyst], who was brought on purely to deal with the hotels. She heads up special projects, making sure all the team are where they should be when they’re meant to be. Myself and Mhairi have worked closely on other large special projects like COP26 and we do work extremely well together.

We employed staff from Marriott as well who are just lovely so it’s the team that make it a great position to work in, but then that interaction with the customers is what gets me up and going because it’s what I love. Seeing the impact that my work has on customers is really satisfying.

Is there somewhere in the world, if you could pick one place in the world to set up hotels for Aspen Solutions and potentially to visit, where would you choose?

Well, that’s hard because we’ve got some customers who have got some wonderful sites. Anywhere in the world? Oh, Italy, I think, I would absolutely love to go to Italy. There’s some beautiful sights over there!

Our thanks to Alex for this excellent interview!

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