Family Owned Operator Puts Leading Edge Financial Management Tools to Work for Stronger Property Performance
PITTSBURGH – December 12, 2016 – Nick Massad, Jr. and his wife Vicki purchased American Liberty Hospitality 26 years ago on a foundation of service to its owners and investors. They worked hard, hired good people and treated every penny as if it were their own. Today American Liberty Hospitality (ALH) operates 20 properties with Hilton, IHG and other flags in Texas and Louisiana. The company is a real American success story.
Nick Massad, Jr. started in the hotel business as a bellboy to help put himself through college. At graduation he took a job with American Liberty and worked his way up to general manager. He and his wife acquired ALH in 1990 when the company’s owners decided to leave the hospitality industry. They never looked back.
ALH began with limited service properties. They expanded to more and larger properties because it delivered solid results for its owners, “Today, we operate our 20-property portfolio for multiple owners and investors. We are price conscious operators,” said Craig D. Kaplan vice president of corporate operations for ALH. “Our management and development decisions are based on owner wellbeing regardless of property or brand. We manage each property as if the owner is us.”
American Liberty’s portfolio growth quickly revealed that its financial system was unable to provide detailed property performance reporting. Kaplan said. “As we expanded it was clear that our financial system was not designed for multi-property operations.” ALH’s owners wanted timely performance reports and the company’s executive team wanted greater visibility into daily property operations for decision making. ALH was manually entering property audit numbers into Excel to track management-decision impact on revenue and expenses. It was too much work. “ALH’s success triggered our search for stronger hotel-specific accounting, forecasting, and business intelligence systems to help us hit our property goals.”
ALH spoke to several hotel companies about their financial and operational software before selecting Aptech Computer Systems’ hotel software. ALH installed Aptech’s entire suite of products, Profitvue® enterprise accounting, Execuvue® Business Intelligence (BI), and Targetvue Budgeting and Forecasting. “Timely Business Intelligence analysis is essential for any hotel company that manages by the numbers to reach its goals,” Kaplan said. “With Aptech we do same-day performance reporting.” Profitvue automatically collects property audit data and seamlessly flows it into Execuvue for analysis and a variety of ownership and management reports.
“Aptech’s Execuvue definitely makes our operation more efficient. This benefits our owners,” Kaplan said. “We provide actionable property performance analysis reports whenever needed. The system lets us identify and act immediately on issues that may affect profitability. These hotel software financial tools make us proactive managers who are able to intelligently achieve our owners’ goals. Now we optimize property performance with strategies based on actual performance.”
Aptech was also a factor in other areas of American Liberty’s business. “As ALH evolved with the new financial platform we found more highly qualified executives to join our team,” he said. “We changed from a small company with staff who knew how to audit a hotel, to a group of management professionals who understood how to put BI data to work for owners.” ALH uses Aptech’s Targetvue to smoothly create efficient and accurate budgets and forecasts. The company communicates property financials with Profitvue Enterprise Financial Accounting and Webvue® remote access to instantly communicate between properties and ALH’s corporate offices. Aptech’s systems may be premise-based or remotely hosted. Aptech hosts American Liberty Hospitality’s systems and data at its secure network operation center.
“Aptech’s people have a wealth of hotel operations experience based on their work with hundreds of companies,” said Cindy Decker, Vice President of Revenue Management for Houston-based American Liberty. “We meet with them to brainstorm strategies and create goals for the next 12 months. Our objective is to leverage the best technology to create the greatest profitability for our owners.”
Kaplan agreed, saying, “Prospective owners are impressed by how we use Aptech’s solutions to create a highly effective management process that delivers a profit. Aptech is not just a vendor to us, it is a partner. We have a collaborative relationship and that creates success for our owners and all others involved.”
Aptech is the leading provider of hotel software for business intelligence, budgeting, and enterprise financial accounting. Click here for more on Aptech’s products and services.
