With over 25 years of experience in the hospitality and hotel management industry, John Imaizumi serves as Gaylord Hotels' Senior Vice President, General Manager & Regional Hotel Operations. In his position, Imaizumi is responsible for managing all operations of Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas; overseeing operations for Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Kissimmee, Florida; executing leisure travel business operations for Gaylord Hotels; and managing leisure corporate partnerships for Gaylord Hotels. In addition, Imaizumi is responsible for identifying new key leisure opportunities for Gaylord Hotels.
Locally, Imaizumi directly oversees Gaylord Texan's 1,511 room luxury resort including its 400,000-square-foot convention center, Glass Cactus live music nightclub, 10-acre Paradise Springs outdoor pool & lazy river complex, casual and fine dining restaurants including the James Beard recognized Old Hickory Steakhouse, and 25,000-square-foot Relâche Spa. Additionally, he directs the resort's large annual special events including SummerFest, Lone Star Christmas, and the famed ICE! attraction – bringing over a million additional visitors to the spectacular property during the holiday seasons. Imaizumi's passion for providing a caring and employees first culture has led to record-breaking retention numbers and numerous honors including the Dallas Business Journal's "Best Place to Work" first place award for three years, The Dallas Morning News' first place "Top Places to Work" award for two consecutive years, and the Texas Workforce Commission's "Employer of Excellence" award.
With a strong passion for promoting environmental sustainability, Imaizumi helps lead Gaylord Texan in developing and maintaining their "going green" efforts. The property has taken several notable measures to become an official green hotel including installing energy saving lights in its public spaces, creating a massive recycling program, maintaining a full-time horticulture team to care for the resort's four-and-a-half acres of lush indoor gardens, and turning over its 1.5 million holiday lights to LED, just to name a few. The resort also took great "environmentally friendly" measures to build the newly opened Paradise Springs pool complex. Imaizumi actively participates in the city's "Keep Grapevine Beautiful" organization that cleans and protects LakeGrapevine, home to the Gaylord Texan, and its surrounding grounds. As a result of these combined efforts, Gaylord Texan was extremely proud to receive Fort Worth, Texas magazine's "Most Environmentally Friendly Company" award.
Imaizumi joined Gaylord Hotels in 2003 from Ian Schrager Hotels in New York, where he most recently served as Chief Administrative Officer and prior to that was Vice President of Operations and Technology. He was also with Fairmont Hotels for six years and prior to that was with Marriott Hotels and Resort for more than eight years where he served as Controller of Marriott's Hilton Head Resort and was a member of the opening team for Marriott's 1,674-room "Marquis Mega" hotel in Atlanta.
John earned his bachelor's degree in Finance from the University of Utah. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board for the Texas Hotel & Lodging Association and a board member for the Grapevine Convention & Visitors Bureau. Last December, he was recognized as the 2011 General Manager of the Year by the Hotel Association of TarrantCounty in Dallas.
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