Patrick Maurer, Co-Founder and Head of Development for BPN Solutions

I remember the first day when I started my hospitality journey 15+ years ago as Front Desk Agent in one of the most luxurious hotels in Vienna, Austria. 15th century building, 128 suites, mahogany front desk counters, oil paintings of royalty on the walls, and all the other clichés one would expect of a luxury hotel demanding 600 EUR per night back then.

And it was money well spent. The service? Impeccable. From the moment you stepped out of your limousine, a doorman age 35+ would open your door and sincerely welcome you. He would most likely remember you from your stay one year ago and remain at your side while carting your suitcases in his freshly polished cart to the lobby. While passing the entrance, you would be greeted by the Chief Concierge who worked in this place for 40 years and is too valuable to retire, since he knows every guest and is perhaps one of the 5 people in Vienna who has the connections to get you tickets to the New Years’ Opera Ball even though its been sold out for months. The Hotel Manager, a seasoned hotelier who with 40 years of age is still thought to be too young to be a General Manager, will greet you during check-in as he is on his rounds throughout the hotel, chatting with every guest he comes across, all the while making sure he does not spend a single minute more in the office than necessary since this is not where any true hotelier belongs. The fact that he speaks 4-5 languages fluently and is easy to accommodate guests from all parts of the world is something you will realize once he had a quick chat with you and welcomed you back to your home away from home.

The list of experiences with all these unique and service-minded characters goes on and on, but what all of them have in common is that at every step of the guest journey, they would be prepared to knock you off your feet, ultimately leaving you to depart this hotel while already thinking of when you can come back next time.

So what makes a great stay like this in a hotel? Is it the well trained staff? Absolutely. Is it because the staff are a cheerful lot like most of us Austrians and sincerely care about being exceptional hosts? I like to think so. Does perhaps the hundreds of years of hospitality experience in this country have something to do with it, resulting in much more carefully crafted stay experiences? Without a single doubt.

Now, sadly we cannot all have hundreds of years of history in our hotels and employ staff who consciously chose this industry as a career path as opposed to colleagues who merely see this as a first step on their long and likely industry-diverse career development .

But what we can do is to take stock of those memories that made our guests’ stays so special. We can collect best practices and references of what made things great and make it easy for other hotels to look at them. Sharing knowledge, providing the next generation of hoteliers with a glimpse of how things are / were done in some of the best houses in the industry, this is something we here at BPN Solutions decided to put at the core of what we are doing.

BPN Maestro is not just a culmination of experiences and best practices of all the years I was fortunate enough to have spent in remarkable hotels, it is also what I see to be leaving behind. An easy way to accomplish the often repetitive tasks of hotel operation, a library of best practices and solutions for our most common challenges, training materials that can help to guide and inspire the next generation.

Welcome to your journey, we at BPN Solutions are looking forward to taking the next step with you.

P.