Testimonial Foremost Resorts

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Foremost Management Services, Inc. is a hospitality operations & consulting firm specializing in Condominium Hotels. Founded in January of 1997 by principals Greg and Denise Stillman, Foremost Management Services, Inc. brings an experienced, hands-on approach to management. Foremost maximizes a property's value through proper planning, sound organization, proven operational methods, tight fiscal control, and aggressive marketing. Foremost becomes the eyes and ears of a property offering support, direction, and structure to a condominium property that typically involves absentee ownership. Foremost Resorts owns four Resorts: Parkwood Lodge, Westwood Shores, Newport Resorts,and Inn at Little Sister Hill.

Parkwood Lodge features affordable family friendly rooms near Peninsula State Park. Its Fish Creek location makes it central to all Door County attractions! The property also features an indoor pool and hot tub, tennis courts, grilling areas. Parkwood Lodge is just minutes from many Door County attractions, including State Parks, golf courses, mini-golf, go-karts, indoor arcades, fishing, boating, biking, hiking, and horseback riding.

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What influenced your decision to partner with Guestcentric?

The promise of ease of use. It was very challenging to work with our previous provider from the backend because we didn’t have the ability to instantly publish or update content or promotions across our website and booking engine. The opportunity to be more autonomous and flexible is ultimately what drove us to join Guestcentric, and we’re happy to say the journey has been going extremely well since then.

How would you describe the website revamp process with Guestcentric for your properties?

We initially agreed to the revamp process to achieve more ease of backend use. Before going into the project with Thomas, we noticed quite a few areas where we would need to request assistance. Thomas said, “You shouldn’t need help with that. You should be able to easily manage your own website yourself, your photos should resize, your fonts should adjust, and overall it should just be easier for you to manage your own website.”

The process was seamless! We had no website downtime throughout the process, no disruptions, and no missed reservations. It was great. We never compromised the user experience on our websites throughout the revamp process. The end result left us very satisfied because not only did our websites stay nice and easy for guests to use, but it was also much easier from our side to implement promotions and stop them when we decided we didn’t need to run them anymore.

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Do you feel your newly-revamped property websites better represent your brand and what has been the impact on visitors/guests?

We initially decided to revamp our website in order to improve usability from the backend. Then we received a call from the Guestcentric team to go over the whole branding exercise, which to be honest seemed a bit tedious at first because we just wanted the backend functionalities improved. But going through the motions on that exercise not only helped your team better understand what we were trying to accomplish but also ensured we relaunched websites that better resonate with guests and optimize their experiences.

From our side, we play around a lot with the booking engine and reservation side of things. We are not designers. Therefore, it has been extremely valuable to work with a team of hospitality and web design experts to take care of that side of things and ensure our websites would be appealing to guests. It’s improved our branding as a result. The consistent color schemes are great! We also like the way everything looks amazing from the user’s perspective, with beautiful big pictures that capture the attention of our online visitors.

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From our side, we play around a lot with the booking engine and reservation side of things. We are not designers. Therefore, it has been extremely valuable to work with a team of hospitality and web design experts to ensure our websites appeal to guests.

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Have you seen an increase in direct bookings as a result of Guestcentric’s integrated website + booking engine solution? If so, what role do you think your new websites played in this increase?

Guestcentric has certainly given us the tools and the data to see how things are shaking out. With some of our properties booking.com is still leading the way in terms of reservations, but at the end of last year, we decided to adjust how we distribute our inventory to them and are excited to see how it goes from here.

Ultimately, the way the booking engine works and even just our switch to Guestcentric has increased our direct bookings for sure because we are better able to implement strategies, such as promotions or social media, that bring guests directly to our direct booking engine rather than the guest having to search for us on Google.

How have the new Hotel Websites improved the sales and marketing for your resorts?

It’s certainly easy to start and run promotions and packages, then put a stop to them when needed. During slow periods, it’s great to have the ability to play around with pushing new offers to attract more guests. The ease of use for the guests is also fantastic!

Guestcentric’s automatic photo editing features has also enabled us to be more efficient with our sales and marketing. With many other website hosts you have to manually resize or edit photos prior to uploading and publishing them. But when we’re on the backend and quickly want to set up a promotion with a photo, the ability to just go into the media library, find the right image, and have it fit instantly is a huge feature that Guestcentric delivers.

It seems small, but we are hotel people, not web designers. With other website providers, it’s common to have to call in to add a photo or make a simple change to the website. With Guestcentric, we have the autonomy and agility to update everything ourselves.

Prior to the pandemic, we promoted the arts and culture in our area, but when the pandemic started, all the theaters closed down. At first we thought, “We’re out of luck”. But as soon as we realized that guests were still traveling to our destination, but instead wanted to kayak, hike or be shown the outdoors, we had the agility to quickly change our photos and everything else we were doing to promote our destination. We’re already back to and in some properties exceeding our 2019 revenue levels, and we are excited about that!

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In terms of the guest experience, we also love the communication side of the Guestcentric platform and the clarity in which a guest can see our room types and book the correct one in the first go.

It’s wonderful to not have to contact other companies or departments for the smallest changes, and that we can just do it ourselves and it works.

How have the new Hotel Websites improved the daily operations for your resorts?

How simple it is to change things, such as prices, implementing packages, and then removing packages when needed. It’s wonderful to not have to contact other companies or departments for the smallest changes, and that we can just do it ourselves and it works.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the level of support throughout the revamp process? Why?

Easily a 10! Thomas in particular is fantastic. We’ve spent a lot of time with Thomas that he has become our friend, even though we have yet to meet him in person. But even just reaching out to the wider support team when Thomas is unavailable, has been a great experience. We have never felt that the team was unavailable to help us out. Guestcentric’s support team is always super fast to respond and resolve any issue which may arise.

What are some of your favorite features about Guestcentric’s integrated website and booking engine solution?

Firstly, the ability to have nice big bold photos seamlessly integrate into our website, and how we can easily upload, edit, and change them when needed. We really value the improvements that we can easily do ourselves across our websites.

In terms of the guest experience, we also love the communication side of the Guestcentric platform and the clarity in which a guest can see our room types and book the correct one in the first go. We have a lot of different room types, and previously that was something we struggled with. But since working with Guestcentric, we no longer receive calls from guests asking to clarify the difference between rooms. We used to have a lot of questions from guests, but now it’s really clear and easy for guests to browse our room types, check availability, check the price, and book in just a few steps. We truly value the simplicity of the journey guests follow through the website and to our booking engine.

Another one of our favorite features is the Revenue Tab at the backend, where we can see the calendar that shows where the different rooms are and how they are filling up. We’re really starting to use this tool a lot more for our forecasting, and Thomas has been helping us learn how to use it to better manage our inventory across our direct channel as well as Booking and Expedia. It’s great to be in control of our distribution, not giving as much inventory to external channels and optimizing our direct channel.

And finally, the people at Guestcentric, who provide us with a wealth of data and training webinars to help us make the best use of the platform and grow our business.

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