Jacob Dehan, President and CEO of Northwind Canada Inc. said, "Northwind is delighted to be partnered with such a dynamic team as the faculty of Centennial College. The highlight of this relationship will be watching the first group of Maestro-Trained Hospitality graduates enter the workforce.  Tourism is growing at a

from left to right:  Shyam Ranganathan, John Dowsett, Jacob Dehan,  Gill Elias, Verona Barclay, Audrey MacRae, Bill Summers,  Mike Sharif, Renee Kenny

The donation, valued at $130,000, will help the college give its students hands-on experience with industry-standard software. In addition, Northwind has given a one-time scholarship endowment of $5,000 to the college, to assist students entering the hospitality field. In return, Centennial will pay for faculty training and continuous upgrades of the software.

"Maestro is a fully integrated hospitality system. The fact that it's Windows-based, user friendly and flexible makes it an indispensable training tool," says Shyam Ranganathan, chair of Centennial's Hospitality and Tourism Administration department. "Maestro is designed to work in hotels of 100 to over 1,000 rooms, which fits our education model well,"

Although Maestro is on par with other industry leading software, Ranganathan says the systems are reasonably similar, allowing college hospitality graduates to acquire marketable skills quickly and easily. With so many college-trained hospitality graduates advancing into management positions, Northwind expects they will influence future software purchases based on the products with which they are most familiar.  

Centennial College has approximately 300 full-time students in its Hospitality and Tourism Administration department. With the recent acquisition of a Scarborough Howard Johnson hotel by the college, the department may be moving into the facility to operate it as a 380-bed student residence and summer conference centre. We should put Maestro in this facility to assist in the hands on field training of our students and graduates.

Markham, Ontario-based Northwind, Inc., is a leading global supplier of software and eCommerce solutions that satisfy the requirements of virtually any size hotel, resort, meeting/conference center or multi-property corporate headquarters. In addition to providing complete true integration with Forsys� SilverWare suite of POS tools, Northwind�s Maestro, Maestro Enterprise and ResEze products provide complete Web-enabled suites of PMS, Sales & Catering, Web Reservations and Corporate Solutions. Northwind�s Enterprise Solutions span the gamut, helping hotels optimize core operations in areas such as the front desk, accounts receivable, sales and catering, global on- and off-line reservations, club/spa and tee-time management, centralized operations, yield management, corporate booking facilities, point-of-sale systems, work order maintenance and back-office accounting, among others.