Massachusetts-based boutique hotel management company Main Street Hospitality has grown modestly since forming in 2014, and now CEO Sarah Eustis says the company is ready to take the next step and grow more substantially by creating clusters of properties across the Northeast U.S.
Main Street's portfolio of boutique hotels is made up of six opened properties and more to come in Long Island, Western Massachusetts and Rhode Island. However, in the long term, Eustis said it is a possibility the company will expand its portfolio to other parts of the country.
Opened properties are the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; Porches Inn at Mass MoCa in North Adams, Massachusetts; Seven Hills Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts; Briarcliff Motel in Great Barrington, Massachusetts; Hammetts Hotel in Newport, Rhode Island; and the new Beatrice Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island.
Of those properties, Main Street owns the Red Lion Inn — not affiliated with the similarly named hotel brand — and Briarcliff Motel.
"We are ... thinking about regional clusters ... so that even if the properties aren't as huge, we can start to create economies of scale, whether that's [through] regional general managers or regional operations support," she said, noting clusters for her company means having properties within a one-hour drive from each other.
Another growth strategy for the company focuses on a "good-better-best" approach of creating tiers of entry points for guests to experience properties at different pricing levels, from moderately priced to higher end, she said.
Eustis noted, however, that Main Street's growth goal isn't just about the number of hotels, but also fostering the right partnerships that allow the company to do multiple projects if the opportunity is there.
"The thing that we are now being more disciplined about, and it's great to be in a position to be more choosy in some ways, [is] the projects need to have relevance and meaning to the places where they are," she said. "They don't all look the same; they don't act the same by any stretch."
For a partnership and project to make sense, it must be a catalyst for promoting tourism, promoting sustainability and connecting to the local community, she added.
For more on Main Street Hospitality's goals, challenges and successes, read this Q&A with Eustis.
You recently opened the Beatrice Hotel. How did it go?
It opened on Sept. 1. It was a successful opening, kind of a softer opening. We didn't have a big flashy event. We had about a two-week soft opening, and it gave us a chance to really put the operation through its paces. We are already exceeding our expectations in terms of how we thought the first phase of operation would go, in terms of revenue and bookings. The back-to-college market really appreciated having a new product in Providence. It's a smaller, very personable experience.
What are some of challenges of opening and staffing a new hotel in this environment?
That particular hotel [the Beatrice Hotel] is a labor of love for a lot of people, the Paolino family who sponsored the project. It had a planned opening date, and then COVID hit, and so probably the hardest thing — and I would commend the developer, the family and the team — was just the uncertainty of how should we behave now. Should we mobilize to get [it] absolutely ready to open so the next day it could open, which costs money? We were maybe 90% ready to go. Or, do we just hit the brakes, wait and see what happens and make a plan to open when the market is back above 50%? That's what we decided to do.
Construction continued and the completion of the hotel continued, but we just collectively took a step back, took a deep breath, started to envision a launch. We waited a full year beyond when we thought we were going to open. Conversely, the Hammetts in Newport [Rhode Island], we opened on time in June [2020] of the pandemic. The hardest thing was to hit the pause button, and we stayed in touch to come back together as a team and make sure all the gears were still turning after a few months of pausing.
But we did it, and I feel really proud. We just had to wait until it was economically viable.
In 2020, you said your team learned there were a lot of things they could live without as the priority was to stabilize hotels. How has that morphed along the way into 2021? Is the team still on that line of thinking?
It's something we talk about almost every day. We are a seasonal business, so it's just flexing with demand. It's hard, whether pandemic or pre-pandemic. But I know that many of the efficiencies and ways of working and thinking about work and what's valuable to the guest will continue. We are slowly bringing back the little details that our guests loved.
At the Red Lion Inn, where there's maybe more expectation of turn-down [service] and nightly housekeeping, we have been slow to bring that back because it didn't seem to be as important to our guests as we thought. We are letting them tell us. We're really trying to listen.
We have a list of traditions that everybody knows about, that are really important, and some of the things we allowed to flex during COVID because we just had to. Some of the things now have to come back, and they are. Just little things like daises in the bathroom. This is a little thing that we've been doing at the Red Lion Inn forever. We also have a little storybook that goes on peoples' beds at night. During COVID, we let it pause.
What has been really difficult is knowing that we're not meeting everybody's expectations because we just don't have enough bodies to support. We've been actively recruiting. We have a very talented core team who I am so grateful for. But I know that when there's a line at the bar, that everyone's just waiting, they're not loving it, and I wish they didn't have to wait. That's just where we are right now.
How have you best prepared your teams for the wave of pent-up leisure demand during the summer, and what can be done now to keep that momentum going?
We've gotten much better at dealing with unknowns. Right now, we are coming into the phase we call OFS. It's October Fatigue Syndrome. In a seasonal property, you are doing the same amount of volume as July and August, with half the staff, because all the college kids have gone back.
Everyone is just tired, so we have to be careful. We make sure our teams take care of themselves and everybody gets two days off.
Our Beatrice property is in a more even, less seasonal market, which is what we're hoping to add more into the portfolio over time to balance things out.
I think the actual experience over the last 18 months has been the thing that has taught people the most. What we have promoted is relentless communication, courage to speak up if you're feeling overwhelmed or burnt out, and understanding that there's a lot of imperfections. The hospitality training that we do that is very intense has started to focus on how to communicate with people if you can't give them everything they want. And that's the essence of hospitality ... acting more as people who are trying to find solutions.
Have your properties had success with full buyouts for family gatherings?
The Briarcliff Motel is 17 rooms, nestled right next to a hiking mountain, [and is] a perfect buyout, and we've had a couple of those that have been families and groups. We've been talking about this, to continue to create buyout packages. Seven Hills is also another really great buyout property with 57 rooms. Some properties lend themselves to that.
At the Red Lion Inn, we have all these beautiful cottages around the property, some of them are eight, nine, one is 17 rooms, so we can do mini buyouts.
Beatrice is well-suited for that, even if it's just a buyout of a floor. [At the] Hammetts, we've had some success with a buyout of the second floor because it has an interior lobby/gather space that can be all yours if you own the second floor.