By Gregg Wallis
When you have operated hotels for more than 32 years, you learn a thing or two about the best way to run things. Morrissey Hospitality is using its experience to launch consulting services so that other hoteliers, who might not want to bring in a third-party company to manage their properties, can take advantage of the knowledge that the company has.
“As we built that reputation over time in the various markets that we were working in, people would call us,” said Elizabeth Morrissey-Brown, SVP/chief growth officer, Morrissey Hospitality, whose father founded the company. “At the root of hospitality, we are of service. So, informally, we started doing consulting services, helping people in brand reposition and giving advice.”
Morrissey Hospitality’s consulting platform can be structured narrowly or comprehensively. Services include sales and revenue optimization, expense management and cost-of-goods analysis, workforce evaluation, legal and human resources support, procurement and food and beverage strategy.
“We’re taking all of our shared-service offerings—including marketing, human resources, procurement—and we can either separate them out like an à la carte menu, or we can pull them together and create the full suite of services,” Morrissey-Brown said. “It was applying our own sales and models of that basic hotel offering and saying, ‘Why can’t we do that from a services perspective?’”
In some cases, the work is focused and diagnostic. She explained, “It could be an owner coming to us saying, ‘I feel like my operational expenses are way too high compared to the market. Can you come in as a third-party observer and give me some analysis of where we are?’ It could be, ‘My business is in crisis. I need to reposition it.’”
Since formally launching the consulting division, Morrissey-Brown said demand has been strongest in predevelopment projects, particularly those with budgets of $15 million or less. The firm works alongside architects, contractors and designers to review decisions that may affect long-term operations.
“You may be cutting costs over here, but now you have maintenance of all this painted wall space,” she said. “You didn’t factor that in vs. maybe paying a little bit more upfront for vinyl. Whoever is operating it and owning it must live with those decisions.”
On a recent project, she said, a nearly complete design omitted housekeeping storage on guest floors. “It was probably 95% there, and then I realized on each floor they forgot linen closets,” said Morrissey-Brown. “It’s not about blame. It’s that you’re only as smart as the people around you, and when you’re making critical decisions that are theoretical, you must have the experts that understand what they mean when they go actual.”
Richard Dobransky, president/CEO, Morrissey Hospitality, said his focus is on the years that follow opening day.
“To me, it’s the second day,” he said. “If you did all your work up front, then your second day through your 10th, 20th and 30th year all work out really well because you thought about everything.”
He cited service elevators, loading dock layouts and waste management planning as examples of decisions that can affect daily efficiency. Technology planning is another frequent oversight.
“It just floors me that WiFi is so often missed in the predevelopment phase,” Morrissey-Brown said. “It’s like water. People assume it will just be there, but no one pre-costs what that infrastructure actually means.”
Rising labor costs have made such planning more critical, Dobransky added. “We’re not going away from a 40% to 42% labor cost,” he said. “That’s here to stay. You can’t build on a 30% labor cost anymore.”
The firm is also frequently called upon to evaluate food and beverage operations. “Food and beverage has a different operating model,” Morrissey-Brown said. “It’s not high margin. You can lose money quickly. But it’s becoming more important to the overall hotel operating model.”
Consulting engagements sometimes evolve into management agreements, though Morrissey-Brown said alignment is essential. “We like to call it dating,” she said. “Our core business is the management side, and that’s more long-term. That’s our marriage.”
The executives said formalizing consulting reflects a broader diversification strategy shaped by experience.
“Regardless of industry, if you can’t stay singular,” Morrissey-Brown said. “I don’t know if that’s even an option in the modern world. You must diversify. You have to find incremental revenue to grow.”
To see content in magazine format, click here.
