The Inn at Haven Harbour is part of Brawner Company’s Haven Harbour Marina Resorts, a D.C.-based real estate and marina hospitality group that has quietly built a collection of properties along the Eastern Shore. “I’m vice president of the Brawner Company,” said Tyler Gibson. “We are a family-owned real estate company. We own marina resorts over on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. As part of that business, we have a 24-room inn that had just developed over the years as this company has owned it.”
Though lodging isn’t their main line of work, it’s become an important one. “It’s not necessarily our core business, but it is an important part of our business and it continues to develop,” Tyler said.
When Tyler began overseeing the inn, he noticed opportunities for improvement in both operations and pricing. “In reviewing our financials, I took a look in the department and saw our year-over-year performance had been declining,” he said. “Doing a deep dive found all sorts of issues.”
Part of the challenge stemmed from the loss of institutional knowledge after COVID. “In previous years we had tenured employees that kind of grew with the business and had a good feel for the market and where the pricing should be,” Tyler explained. “Then during COVID we lost some of that knowledge and plugged in some people that weren’t as invested as our previous people.”
The result was a need for a reset and a more structured approach to rebuild the business.
As Tyler rebuilt operations, he started looking for ways to modernize pricing and reduce reliance on manual management. “I was looking into different ways of managing inns, and came across TakeUp AI,” he said. “I wanted less human involvement and I wanted to move that function to our DC office where I am. This system in partnership with Think allowed us to do that.”
He saw TakeUp as an opportunity to simplify oversight while improving results. “The way we were managing it currently was faulty and wasn’t working,” he said. “Anything was better than what we were currently doing. So it was worth a try.”
At the same time, he streamlined staffing to support the new approach. “I restructured the way our staffing was set up,” Tyler said. “I eliminated the inn manager position, kept on a front desk assistant and cleaners. I was able to boost our income. Taking that risk of trying TakeUp really made sense at the time.”
Having implemented many systems before, Tyler found TakeUp’s setup refreshingly simple. “It was a lot easier than I expected,” he said. “I’ve been involved in a number of different onboardings, different systems. I’ve moved accounting softwares, I’ve done all sorts of different things, and TakeUp was definitely one of my easiest onboardings.”
“We saw a large improvement in our occupancy, especially from this year over last year and what we had projected going forward.”
Tyler Gibson, Vice President Brawner Company
As operations stabilized, Tyler began working with his revenue strategist. “It’s nice that there’s somebody that checks in,” he said. “It is good to meet with somebody monthly every so often to discuss if we want to be more courageous with the AI modeling. We started off very conservatively, and now, since we’re going into our offseason, this is the time to try that courageous modeling and push it into the next season and see what we can potentially get.”
After onboarding TakeUp, Tyler immediately saw improvements in booking pace and occupancy compared to the prior year. “We saw a large improvement in our occupancy, especially from this year over last year and what we had projected going forward,” he said.
Within a few months, revenue trends had fully reversed. “We are at a point now where our revenue is on pace to beat last year,” Tyler said. “So there’s been a huge turnaround.”
One experience in particular drove home the system’s effectiveness. “The owner went on our website to reserve a room and saw only one room left,” Tyler recalled. “By the time I got into ThinkReservations to block that room off, the room was already reserved. I was like, sorry bud, we’re making money.”
With TakeUp managing pricing, the business runs leaner and smarter. “I reduced my variable costs, I increased my revenue, and we have much better management and oversight on our operations,” Tyler said. “It’s been a game changer.”
For other independent owners or operators considering TakeUp, Tyler’s message is straightforward. “I would tell them to do it,” he said. “Lower your staffing costs. You’re not having to analyze all the different market data points. You can pretty much rely on the system with minimal input and rely on it to actually manage the rates, which has been a game changer.”
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