Inside and out, The Dewberry Charleston is a manifestation of founder John Dewberry’s vision of “Southern Reimagined™.” The 155-room independent hotel was brought to life by a team of architects and designers who shared Dewberry’s mission to present Charleston, South Carolina from a uniquely personal perspective. The result is a thoughtfully imagined juxtaposition of past and present that redefines what is possible when historic preservation is paramount.
A Revenue-Minded GM
Dewberry’s general manager Kristie Rasheed originally joined the property as director of revenue & profit optimization during the hotel’s pre-opening stages in late 2015. In those early days, Rasheed was guided in all decision-making by always asking, “What is the true value of a guest?”
Throughout her 20-plus-year career in hospitality, Rasheed held leadership roles in all disciplines spanning luxury hotels & resorts to vacation rentals. With an analytical yet creative mind, Kristie’s keen understanding of revenue management has been the foundation of her leadership success and made her the standout candidate to take over as The Dewberry’s GM in 2019.
Rasheed strived to deliver much-needed automated efficiency to the hotel’s time-strapped, data-deluged revenue process. Without a dedicated revenue manager, she knew she would need to implement a revenue management system (RMS) she could trust to handle the day-to-day data analysis, number crunching, and dynamic-pricing optimization. She championed IDeaS early on and was instrumental in its purchase and installation process.
Automation & Revenue Science
“IDeaS was hands-down the best solution for our property, and we installed G3 RMS in October 2019 with just enough lead time to be fully optimized before the March 2020 shutdown,” said Rasheed. “Since then, and especially throughout the pandemic, I’ve said, ‘I can’t imagine life without IDeaS,’ more times than I can count.”
Sophisticated yet simple, IDeaS G3 RMS is the hospitality industry’s leading, cloud-based revenue solution. Using advanced machine learning, G3 RMS provides the most flexible and powerful approach to pricing, rate availability, and overbooking by room type and length of stay to generate maximum overall revenue.
“The time-savings from rate loading alone is endless, much less the data-driven intelligence,” said Rasheed. “Charleston is a high-demand, premium market, and IDeaS makes it possible for us to maintain a competitive advantage under the full range of market conditions.”
Rasheed has been able to uphold The Dewberry’s high standards for guest experience excellence, even during periods of low staffing levels coupled with peak demand. She credits IDeaS with being able to enable a new threshold for staffing efficiency and time savings without sacrificing precision and performance.
“We are still in the system daily but only for short periods of time, giving us far more bandwidth for strategic planning. I trust the system completely. I know I can let G3 RMS run on autopilot when needed and don’t have to constantly worry about the decisions it’s making.” Rasheed said.
Since implementing IDeaS, The Dewberry’s revenue performance has only continued to improve with year-over-year increases in ADR, RevPAR, and occupancy. Rasheed sees IDeaS as more than just state-of-the-art software, viewing the company as an extension of her own team and a partnership with both people and technology she can trust.
“The stress reduction alone—much less the monumental ADR growth and profit assistance—is greatly appreciated,” said Rasheed. “Thank you, Dr. Ravi Mehrotra and team IDeaS for building such a brilliant product and for being such excellent technology partners.”
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