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Training 250 Seasonal Employees Every Spring: How Chippewa Hotel and Lilac Tree Suites Maintain Exceptional Guest Experiences with Chorum PMS
There’s something special about operating a hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan. Every spring, Chippewa Hotel Waterfront and Lilac Tree Suites come back to life, welcoming families, vacationers, and small groups for another busy season. For these two independently owned hotels, that seasonality brings a unique operational challenge that would make many hotel operators nervous.
Before the first guests arrive on Mackinac Island, the properties must rapidly onboard and prepare 250 seasonal employees for another busy season. Many employees are new. Many have never worked together before. Yet guests arrive expecting the same exceptional experience they've come to know and trust for years.
For seasonal hotels, that creates a significant operational risk. How do you maintain consistency when much of your workforce changes every year? How do you ensure guest requests aren't forgotten? How do you keep housekeeping, maintenance and front desk teams aligned when hundreds of employees are working across multiple properties? And perhaps most importantly: how do you prevent years of guest knowledge and operational experience from walking out the door every time seasonal employees leave?
For Chippewa Hotel Waterfront and Lilac Tree Suites, solving those challenges required more than hard work. It required a technology platform capable of preserving information, standardizing processes and accelerating training before the season even begins. That's where Chorum PMS became a critical part of the operation.
Seasonal hotels face a challenge that year-round properties seldom encounter. Every year is a fresh start. New employees must learn systems, processes, guest expectations and operational procedures quickly. Any delay can create issues that guests notice immediately.
Poor training can result in: Longer check-in times, Inconsistent guest experiences, miscommunication between departments. Delayed room readiness, service failures during peak occupancy periods.
For Chippewa Hotel and Lilac Tree Suites, training begins long before opening day. The leadership team recognized they needed a way to give employees hands-on experience before arriving on Mackinac Island. "With it being a cloud-based system, it works out really well," explains Bart Berkshire, Front Office Manager. "The layout of everything looks appealing. It's intuitive, it makes sense for staff and makes it easy to navigate for day-to-day tasks."
Because Chorum PMS is cloud-based, seasonal employees can access the system remotely during pre-season onboarding. Staff become familiar with workflows, navigation and daily processes before ever stepping foot on property. Instead of spending the first weeks of the season teaching employees how to use the system, managers can focus on delivering great guest experiences. For a business that effectively rebuilds much of its workforce each year, that time savings is significant.
For many guests, a visit to Mackinac Island is a tradition. Families return year after year. Many request the same room. Many have specific preferences they expect the hotel to remember. The challenge for seasonal properties is that guest knowledge often lives in the minds of employees. When those employees leave at the end of a season, valuable information can disappear with them. That creates risk.
Returning guests don't care whether a staff member is new. They simply expect the experience to feel familiar. The Chippewa Hotel and Lilac Tree Suites team uses Chorum PMS to capture guest preferences, historical notes and recurring requests so important details don't get lost over time.
Whether it's a guest who always requests the same room or a returning visitor who appreciates wine glasses waiting in their room upon arrival, those details become part of a shared organizational memory rather than knowledge held by a single employee.
"Because we have a lot of guests who come back year after year, we want to make sure we can provide that same great experience every time they visit," says Berkshire. "Keeping detailed notes about their preferences helps us get ahead of their needs.” The result is a more personalized guest experience that remains consistent regardless of employee turnover or seasonal staffing changes.
Communication failures don't just create operational headaches. They create guest experience problems. When housekeeping and the front desk aren't aligned, room turnaround times increase. When requests fall through the cracks, guest satisfaction suffers.
At peak season, those small breakdowns can quickly become larger operational issues. To reduce those risks, the team relies heavily on Chorum PMS and the mobile app to keep departments connected in real time. Housekeeping teams can submit requests instantly. Front desk employees have visibility into status updates without relying on paper notes, phone calls or verbal follow-up. The system also creates a historical record of what occurred, when it occurred and how the issue was resolved.
"We're definitely saving time, saving paper, all that kind of stuff," Berkshire explains. "Between small requests and quick emergency fixes, having good communication is so important." The benefit extends beyond efficiency. It creates accountability and visibility while helping ensure guests receive the experience they expect.
The summer season may be driven by leisure travelers, but the shoulder seasons bring another challenge, group business. Managing rooming lists, special requests, communications and multiple arrivals simultaneously can quickly become difficult when information exists in spreadsheets, emails or handwritten notes. The team uses Chorum PMS to centralize group information, maintain detailed notes and quickly access updates whenever a tour operator or organizer contacts the property.
"It's always good to keep detailed notes," says Berkshire “Now we have them in one place." By keeping information connected and accessible, staff can respond faster and operate with confidence, even when multiple groups are arriving and departing at the same time.
One of the biggest challenges hospitality leaders face is making decisions without complete information. Occupancy forecasts impact staffing. Arrival patterns affect operations. Group activity influences scheduling. Without reliable visibility, managers often find themselves reacting rather than planning.
The Chippewa Hotel team uses Chorum's reporting capabilities to gain insight into reservations, forecasts, guest activity and operational performance. Reservation forecasts are reviewed nearly every day and become part of weekly department-head discussions. The concierge team uses reports to plan luggage operations. Managers use forecasts to anticipate staffing requirements. Emergency response planning is supported through accessible guest information. Night audit reports and deposit-due reporting help support daily operational execution.
"I don't know if there's a report that honestly we don't use," says Berkshire.
Over time, the value compounds. Every note, guest preference, report and operational record becomes part of a centralized knowledge base that helps the organization perform more effectively year after year.
For Chippewa Hotel Waterfront and Lilac Tree Suites, Chorum PMS does more than support daily operations. It helps solve one of the biggest challenges seasonal hotels face: maintaining consistency in an environment defined by constant change.
By simplifying employee onboarding, preserving guest knowledge, improving departmental communication and centralizing operational information, the properties have created a system that helps their teams focus on what matters most. Delivering exceptional guest experiences.
"Training, you're going to save a lot of time," says Berkshire. "Just getting everybody and all the staff on the app is so helpful. You're going to be able to improve that communication quite a bit. Having everything in the cloud, knowing that it's always there and you don't have to worry about losing anything is such a peace of mind."
For seasonal hotels, losing information can be costly. For Chippewa Hotel Waterfront and Lilac Tree Suites, having the right technology foundation means less time chasing information, fewer operational blind spots and more time creating the memorable experiences that keep guests coming back year after year.
