July, 2002 - The northern plains of the great Midwest have always been home to hearty pioneers who were not afraid to work in a demanding environment.  Over 200 years ago settlers traveling on foot and in wagon trains came to St. Paul, Minnesota to set trap lines, trade with the Native Americans, and to build homes and businesses.  The times were hard, the challenges of founding a new community in the wilderness were huge, but the most capable newcomers were successful and their businesses grew.  Times have not changed all that much. 

“Minnesota is in the middle of the recession, but we have the highest RevPAR in our area, based on our yield in a really challenging environment,” said Bill Morrissey, president and founder in 1995 of Morrissey Hospitality Companies, Inc., a Minnesota-based full service management company specializing in lodging, restaurants and catering. “When things get soft what comes bubbling to the top are inefficiencies and unprofitable areas like food and beverage.  Being full service, we know how to manage the F&B.  What we looked for – and found - was the right technology to let us unlock yield management and data mine a customer database that is 15 years rich.” 
 

Morrissey explained the company chose the Maestro PMS system from NORTHWIND for basically three reasons:  “It is an enterprise system, not a legacy system, with an open database that allows us to data mine for marketing information; it refreshes the numbers real-time as new reservations are entered; and it is user-friendly.”  The company installed its new PMS system at two luxury historic hotels:  The

Saint Paul Hotel 350 Market Street Saint Paul, MN

Maestro’s Yield Management system helped catapult The Saint Paul Hotel to number one in RevPAR in its competitive set two months after installation.  “We achieved  72.8 percent occupancy in May,” said Deborah Hermance, The Saint Paul Hotel’s Director of Guest Services.  “According to Smith Travel Research, our competitive set achieved  69 percent. We also ran a little more than $5 a day higher in average daily rate and we did that by setting the individual rate categories  to escalate with occupancy.” 

Hermance noted that, prior to their new PMS system, she and the hotel’s team had to manually yield manage the 254 room hotel every day of the year, which meant they had to be in the system four or five times a day to coordinate separate leisure and group segments.  This was an error-prone procedure that could result in incorrect settings. “Now we are driving rate and occupancy through yield management instead of reacting to it.  In addition to saving manpower and reducing the margin of error, we can see at a glance what our business is doing within the different markets we serve.” 

Hermance also said, “Before Maestro I would have to verbally communicate length of stay restrictions and other selling guidelines. Now we have the option to force the end-user to sell based on the guidelines, or I can give my staff an override option and allow the override permission by user group.  We can manage demand, percentage guidelines, and cut-off rates without having to monitor our inventory 24 hours a day.”

Maestro Builds Customized Reports, Last Minute Packages

“We are a corporate driven hotel and highly segmented in the way we forecast our demand such as unique groups, contract, leisure, corporate, and special corporate with our local negotiated rate,” continued Hermance.  “With our previous system we had to blend four or five reports to come up with the monthly forecast.  Now it’s one report, the ‘Forecast Report.’  NORTHWIND helped us customize one report to compare and identify trends in the various segments, and the time I save lets me concentrate more on our guests.”  Maestro’s productivity tools also include analysis components, spreadsheets, word processors, and report writers.

Maestro also integrates with Microsoft Excel and Crystal Reports, making it easy to create user-configurable reports.  “We can build our own reports now.  If I want to identify repeat business trends I can design a report to my own specifications.  It used to be an expensive and timely process  to have a custom report built, and we could not run simple queries.  With Crystal Reports and Excel I can pull information directly from our database when I need it,” said Hermance, who continued, “The staff can also build custom packages unique to one individual or, for hotel-wide special events, on demand.”

You’ve Got Mail!

In addition to the efficiencies, Hermance says hotel staff also has fun with the system.  “We are able to send Maestro Mail back and forth to get and give information as changes occur throughout the day,” she said.  More than an email engine, Maestro Mail is internal to Maestro users and is date sensitive to allow reminders for future activities planning.  Tasks can even be assigned to specific staff members and monitored for completion.  Interfaces send messages to appointed staff so that a clerk can see all internal traces and messages from one place. 

“We’re moving to fully integrate our sales and catering and PMS,” Hermance concluded. “It will allow the sales team to sell live inventory, instead of working from a separate system restricted by group ceilings.  The Maestro way is a more dynamic, more profitable way to sell.”

In the fall, Morrissey Hospitality will install NORTHWIND’s ResEze  Internet reservation system; the Maestro Sales and Catering system; and Maestro GDS+, NORTHWIND’s on-line, real-time Global Distribution System reservation engine in both of its hotels. 

About The Saint Paul Hotel and the St. James Hotel
The 254-room Saint Paul Hotel has been Minnesota’s only Mobil-rated Four-Star hotel for nearly two decades and was voted number one out of the city’s top ten luxury hotels.  The 61-room St. James Hotel, located in the charming town of Red Wing, Minn., features antique and restored furnishings and other features typical of the 19th century. Both hotels are members of the Historic Hotels of America, an organization of 170 historic hotels established by The National Trust in 1989.

About Morrissey Hospitality Companies, Inc.
Morrissey Hospitality Companies, Inc. is a St. Paul, Minnesota based hospitality management and consulting firm that provides market-leading expertise in new or existing full-service lodging, restaurants, and specialty catering operations. Its dynamic marketing and brand-building programs increase sales, establish customer loyalty, and improve the stability and overall financial health of each business. Morrissey Hospitality creates wealth for its owners, opportunities for its employees, and consistently practices Authentic Hospitality^tm.