Maryborough District Health Service is a progressive rural healthcare provider in Victoria, Australia.

The MDHS is committed to giving the community access to great care, that includes a hospital, residential aged care, community health and accommodation services.

Having most recently opened a 20 room student accommodation facility, MDHS needed to find a way to manage these operations more efficiently.

Little Hotelier spoke to David Edwards, Executive Director Infrastructure, Technology & Experience at MDHS, about the journey.

Leaving manual work behind

Prior to making a committed investment in accommodation technology, the team at Maryborough District Health service had a very clunky and time consuming order of operations.

This included using outlook calendars for managing booking information and using email to coordinate cleaning schedules, which required constant manual updating and checking.

Knowing something had to change, the team implemented Little Hotelier. So far, the solution has been a rousing success according to David.

“The system no longer requires any administrative input for booking and payment of accommodation. Check-in processes are supported by a hotel services team member (with other responsibilities), who can also self-generate room cleaning information and use the app to reintroduce rooms back for booking,” he said. “We are no longer having rooms uncleaned before the next guest arrives for their stay.” 

“Before Little Hotelier we had to commit significant admin support to maintain booking, payment, and check-in/out processes. Cleaning teams were missing rooms and maintenance issues were not being tracked and resolved quickly enough,” he explained.

Benefits seen all the way down to the bottom line

Not only does Little Hotelier’s software make life easier for accommodation managers, it can make a real difference to revenue growth, cash flow, and profitability.

This is not only achieved from saving time and becoming more efficient but also from using the integrated features that allow a user to maximise their bookings and make smart pricing decisions.

“Revenue is up for accommodation for a couple of reasons,” explained David. “We updated our pricing with the introduction of Little Hotelier, and we have more accommodation to rent. Our finance team is also more confident that booking payments are not being missed as the old system did not have a way of identifying if someone did not pay.”

“We are yet to run detailed numbers on the overall financial percentage increases but we now have reporting systems that enable this work to be completed more quickly. We have really appreciated the system and the way it has streamlined and integrated our clients and support teams’ access to information.”

Easy setup and simple experience lead to big results

One of the great things about Little Hotelier is how easy it is to get started and how quickly a user can become comfortable with using the system.

This allows an accommodation business to keep running smoothly throughout the implementation process, and begin seeing the benefits straight away. These sentiments were echoed by David and the team at MDHS.

“A team member with MDHS led the implementation and set up of the new system. We found the online support, especially the videos, really helpful,” he explained.

“We’ve loved being able to reduce manual processes. Booking and payment no longer needs administrative support, cleaning teams have real time access to rooms requiring cleaning or which rooms are occupied, and building services are being automatically notified of any room maintenance issues.”

MDHS is also using Little Hotelier’s mobile app, giving them extra freedom and flexibility.

“The management and Hotel Services team can see which rooms are occupied at any time,” David continued. “Cleaning teams are using the app to recognise completed cleans on rooms and allowing them to be booked by the system.”

Thank you David and the team at Maryborough District Health Service for the amazing feedback. Best of luck in the future and we look forward to our continued success together!

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