Mark Cowan
Corporate Director of Sales and Marketing

Mark began his hospitality career in the guest services departments with Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts while earning his Bachelor of Arts degree from the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management. While at Four Seasons Hotels he created and implemented the training programs for the Front Office, Bell Services and Valet Parking Departments. Upon his graduation he was recruited by Starwood Hospitality to manage the Front Desk Operations of the W Hotel in New Orleans.

Seeking to move back to Texas, he accepted a position as the Assistant Front Office Manager at the Sam Houston Hotel. While there he helped renovate and open the hotel which had been closed for over twenty years. He was quickly promoted to Hotel Assistant Manager where he was responsible for the day to day operations as well as managing all the distribution and yielding of the property. In 2002 he was recruited by his mentor to open the River Terrace Inn in Napa, California and subsequently was the project manager for several takeovers and re-brandings for Driftwood Hospitality.

Mark returned to Texas a third time in 2005 to work with TravelClick Inc. During his 8 year tenure there, he created their Revenue Optimization department, Premier Services Department and managed level two customer support, the content management department as well as the web analytics departments. He was responsible for over 800 properties and managed the only division of the Revenue Optimization Department to reach its goals and show consistent revenue growth.

In 2012 Mark was asked to take a position as the Corporate Director of Revenue Management for American Liberty Hospitality based in Houston, Texas. While there, he was directly responsible for the day to day Revenue Management for the Embassy Suites, Downtown Houston, the DoubleTree in Galveston, Cypress Bend Golf Resort as well as two Hilton Garden Inns in the Houston area. He also had oversite of the remainder of American Liberty Hospitality’s 16 properties.

In 2014 he began working with the creators of Windsurfer Central Reservation System. As an Area Director of Revenue Management, he was the day to day Revenue Manager for 8 properties including over 2000 guest rooms and was able to achieve 17% increase in RevPAR for his portfolio in his first year. While there he was asked to be a guest speaker for Live Oak Lodging’s annual General Manager and Sales conference where he met owner Rocky Reese and Vice President Jeff Wilkinson and knew that Live Oak Lodging would be a perfect fit for his 27 years of hospitality experience.

Mark likes to say that grew up Texan, just not in Texas. His Texas native father was an F-4 Phantom and A-10 Warthog pilot thus he moved around to several military bases while growing up. Mark has always called Texas home and is very pleased to be back in the Hill Country with his fiancée Maria.