Choice Hotels International, Inc., one of the world’s largest lodging franchisors, is pleased to announce the promotion of its associate Sarah Searls to vice president of business and analytic services. Ms. Searls will report to Bill Carlson, senior vice president of performance analytics.

Under Ms. Searls’ leadership as senior director of business and analytic services, she and her team have provided the company with critical and valuable information, insight and resources. Ms. Searls has been instrumental in the development of a new media mix modeling tool that helped reallocate the company’s media spending to channels that maximize return on investment for the company and its franchise hotel owners. She has also successfully led the development of a new program designed to quantitatively assess the business impact of several corporate initiatives, providing valuable insights on how programs are performing in the marketplace and how they can be optimized for improved performance.

“Sarah is a thought leader for the organization who blends a collaborative style with intellectual rigor in leveraging state-of-the-art analytic techniques to improve our understanding of the business,” said Carlson. “She has consistently demonstrated unique understanding of the varied needs of departments throughout the company and, as a result, has successfully led the development of a number of new modeling tools and analytic processes to assess a broad range of initiatives. I am confident that she will continue to provide a high level of leadership and strong counsel in her new role.”

Ms. Searls joined Choice in 2009 as the first member of a new enterprise-wide analytics function, quickly growing the expertise and stature of this group. She played an integral role in the reorganization of the company’s business intelligence group, assuming broader responsibility for the business and analytics services area, becoming the key point of contact for business users in the deployment of business intelligence services and execution of strategic analytic projects.

Prior to Choice, Ms. Searls spent 10 years with American Online (AOL), most recently serving as Vice President of business intelligence where she was responsible for spearheading the analytical agenda for the company’s web publishing business. She received a master’s degree in business administration from The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University in Middleton, CT.