Magnolia Hotels has selected
Daylight Software as its partner to provide the only Advanced Sales and
Catering system in the marketplace to their growing portfolio of hotels.
Magnolia currently owns and operates three distinctive hotels in Dallas,
Houston, and Denver. Magnolia evaluated several top sales and catering
technology vendors and their solutions. Their analysis concluded that
Daylight was the only company up to the challenge of taking their
companies’ sales to the “next level”. Magnolia continues to develop into a
mid-sized hotel management company with plans to centralize its national
sales efforts at their corporate headquarters in Denver. The Magnolia team
chose Daylight enterprise as the perfect solution for their immediate
needs as well as future goals. “We chose Daylight because the product is very configurable,” said Jeff
Parker, Director of Technology/Chief Funologist of Magnolia and the
reigning HFTP Certified Hospitality Technology Professional of the Year.
“From an IT professional’s perspective, the fact that Daylight offers a
true ASP model with full functionality was certainly a major contributor
to the decision. As we continue to add hotels, the ASP approach means it’s
a simple matter of assigning log-ins, instead of bringing in a forklift
full of new hardware. I can have people up and running on our system
instantaneously.”

Parker and Corporate Director of Sales Mike Pratt both participated in the
Daylight Corporate Standards training sessions at Daylight headquarters in
Portsmouth, NH recently. “We loved the process,” said Parker. “Daylight
helped us see which business processes we’re doing right and what changes
we need to make. Probably the biggest factor is that Daylight treats us as
an important company, not a small fish in a big pond.”

“We recognize that Magnolia Hotels is a growing organization, so we were
able to make practical suggestions during the early phases of their
configuration that will help them maximize their Daylight solution,” said
Erik W. Dorr, Regional VP of Sales for Daylight Software. “The feedback
they’ve given us is that we are the only software company who envisions
how their system needs to work not only for today but also for the future.
As a result, there is wonderful synergy between our two companies that we
are able to translate almost immediately into business processes that
strategically position Magnolia for growth. We had the benefit of having
both their Director of IT and their Corporate Director of Sales and
Marketing to provide answers in real time as we went through the Corporate
Standards phase of the project.”

Daylight’s Advanced Sales & Catering system will aid the three hotels
currently booking meetings and function space as well as coordinating the
significant amount of executive extended stay business they book. Daylight
will interface directly with Magnolia’s RDP property management system
providing true availability for all departments at each of the properties
as well as at the corporate headquarters.
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